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Buffalo  Commercial  Advertiser  Campaign  Document 

No.  1. 

«i_ '    ' .  .      ' * . 

'  THE  PRESIDENTIAL  BATTLE  OF   1872. 


GRANT  AND  HIS  DEFAMERS:  DEEDS  AGAINST  WORDS. 


OF 


HON.  ROSCOE  CONKLING, 

U  J 

_  At  Cooper  Institute,  New  York,  July  23,  1872. 


lNo  might  nor  greatness  in  mortality 
Can  censure  'scape ;  back-iuounding  calumny 
The  "whitest  virtue  strikes ;   what  king  so  strong, 
Can  tie  the  gall  up  in  the  slanderous  tongue  f" 

— Measure  for  Measure. 


The  Republican  mass  meeting  held  on  Tues 
day  evening,  July  23d,  1872,  at  Cooper  Insti 
tute,  New  York,  to  ratify  the  nominations  of 
GRANT  and  WILSON,  was  remarkable  in  point 
of  numbers,  respectability  and  enthusiasm. 

Long  before  the  hour  for  the  opening  of  the 
proceedings  the  large  hall  of  the  Institute  was 
densely  crowded.  Many  ladies  were  among 
the  audience.  Every  seat  in  the  lobby,  hall, 
and  on  the  stage  was  occupied,  and  hundreds 
were  glad  to  obtain  standing  room. 

The  Hon.  JACKSON  S.  SCHULTZ  presided, 
and  a  long  list  of  Vice- Presidents  and  Secreta 
ries  was  read.  The  Hon.  ROSCOE  CONKLING, 
U.  S.  Senator,  on  being  introduced  by  the 
President,  was  received  with  loud  and  repeated 
cheers.  After  the  applause  had  subsided,  he 
said  : 

MR.  CHAIRMAN,  LADIES  AND  GENTLEMEN  : 
Your  greeting  of  me  tonight,  and  the  warmth 
of  your  reception,  quite  oppress  me.  I  have  no 
words  to  fitly  express  my  feelings. 

For  twenty  years,  it  has  been  my  privilege  to 
address  my  neighbors  upon  political  issues,  and 
too"  much  ardor,  has,  perhaps,  been  among  my 
laultsV  Yet  no  canvass  has  ever  stirred  me  so 
deeply  itethis.  No  election  has  ever  appealed 
so  stronglyto  my  sense  of  fair  play,  no  canvass 
within  my  rHemory  has  ever  been  so  full  of  foul 
play,  injustices-id  malice,  none  has  ever  more 
thoroughly  teste^,  the  common  sense  and  gen 
erosity  of  the  AmWan  people. 

INJUSTICE   HEAPEfc   ON   THE    PRESIDENT. 

Eleven  years'  service  in  Congress  has  made 
me  a  close  observer  of  four  Presidents  and  of 


many  public  men  ;  and  if  among  them  all  there 
is  one,  living  or  dead,  who   never   knowingly 
failed  in  his  duty,  that  ope  is  Ulysses   Sydney 
Grant.     There  was  forecast  in  giving  him  the 
name  of  Sydney,  for  his  greatest  and  gentlest 
quality  is  his  magnanimity.     If  there  has  been  a 
high  official  ever  ready  to  admit  and  cerrect  an 
error ;  if  there  has   been  one  who  did  wisely, 
firmly  and  well  the  things  given  him  in  charge, 
that   one  is   the  soldier  in  war  and    the  quiet 
patriot  in  peace,  who  has  been  named  again  by 
every  township  in  forty-six  States  and  Territo 
ries  for  the  great  trust  he  now  holds.     Yet  this 
man,  honest,  brave  and  modest,  and  proved  by 
his   transcendant   deeds   to    be   endowed  with 
genius,  common  sense  and  moral  qualities,  ade 
quate   to  the  greatest   affairs  ;   this  man  who 
saved  his  country,  who  snatched  our  nationality 
and  our  cause  from  despair,  and  bore  them  on 
his  shield  through  the  flame  of  battle,  in  which 
but   for  him  they  would   have   perished;  this 
man,  under  whose  administration  our  country 
has  flourished  as  no  one  dared   predict ;  this 
man,  to  whom  a  nation's  gratitude  and  benedic 
tion  are  due,  is  made  the  mark  for  ribald  jibes 
and   odious,  groundless  slanders.     Why  is  all 
this  ?     Simply  because  he  stands  in  the  way  of 
the    greed    and    ambition    of   politicians  and 
schemers.     Many  honest  men  join  in  the  cry, 
or  hear  it  without  indignation.     They  are  de 
ceived  by  the  cloud  of  calumny  which  darkens 
the  sky  ;  but  the  inventors  are  men  distempered 
with  griefs,  or  else  the  sordid  and  the  vile,  who 
follow  politics   as  the  shark   follows   the  ship. 
A  war  of  mud  and  missiles  has  been  waged  for 
months.     The   President,    his   family,  and   all 
nearly  associated  with  him  have  been  bespat 
tered,  and  truth  and  decency  have  been  driven 
far  away.     Every  thief,    and  cormorant,    and 
drone  who   has  been   put   out  ;    every   baffled 
mouser  for  place  or  plunder  ;  every  man  with  a 


,  ."  ;  'The.  President  and  His  Slanderers. 


grievanqe />r. a  grudge,  j  aU  who  have  something 
to  make- l>y  a  engage,  seem  t<?  vteg  an  unbridle- 
ed  tongue  or  to  drive  a  Foul  pen.  ' 

The  President  cannot  enter  the  lists  of  con 
troversy  and  defend  himself ;  the  proprieties  of 
his  station  forbid  it ;  his  chief  competitor, 
managing  behind  the  curtain  a  newspaper 
from  which  he  pretends  to  have  retired,  is  free 
to  defend  and  puff  himself,  and  feels  free  to  fill 
his  paper  with  base  and  scurrilous  falsehood,  in 
the  hope  of  blackening  a  name  which  is  one 
of  the  treasures  of  the  nation  and  which  will  be 
the  pride  of  posterity.  All  this  pollution  will, 
in  the  end,  disgrace  only  its  authors  ;  it  will  not 
disgrace  Grant  or  the  nation,  because  the  na 
tion  will  spurn  and  resent  it.  The  disgusting 
personalities  emptied  upon  Gen.  Jackson  se 
cured  his  re-election  ;  an  offended  people  struck 
back,  and  they  will  strike  back  again. 

WHERE   THE  OPPOSITION   HAS   BLUNDERED. 

The  American  people  may  misjudge  a  politi 
cal  question  ;  they  may  be  deceived  ;  but,  with 
the  truth  before  them,  they  will  never  be  unjust, 
and  never  untrue  upon  a  question  of  right  and 
wrong.  Ingratitude  has  been  charged  upon 
Republics,  and  just  there  is  the  point  where  the 
angry  enemies  of  the  President  have  blundered. 
Had  the  cool  veterans  of  the  Democracy  formed 
or  selected  the  issues  to  be  presented,  they  would 
have  been  wise  enough  to  so  frame  them  that 
the  people  could  decide  in  their  favor  without 
fixing  a  stigma  upon  Gen.  Grant,  and  without 
blasting  his  name  or  doing  him  wrong.  But  the 
Democratic  statesmen,  the  leaders  in  a  hundred 
fights,  have  been  mere  lookers  on;  leadership 
has  been  assumed  by  Republican  renegades  and 
"outs;"  men  so  eaten  np  with  envy,  or  so  mad 
dened  with  the  loss  or  refusal  of  place  and  pat 
ronage,  that  nothing  would  satisfy  them  short  of 
a  rancorous,  revengeful,  personal  raid.  When 
a  man  turns  Turk  he  spits  on  the  Cross,  and 
when  wide-throated  ultra  Republicans  clandes 
tinely  trade  with  the  enemy,  and  then  turn 
open  traitors  to  their  party,  they  become  the 
meanest  and  fiercest  opponents,  just  as  Yankee 
slave  overseers  from  New  England  were  always 
more  brutal  than  those  born  in  the  South. 
When  men  whose  vanity  was  hurt,  and  others 
gnawed  by  ambition  and  cupidity,  went  out  to 
ruin  the  party  which  they  could  not  rule,  mad 
ness  drove  them  on.  They  had  no  polar  star, 
except  hatred  of  Grant  and  his  supporters. 
These  lusty  patriots  who  modestly  assumed  the 
name  of  "Reformers,"  would  not  have  an  ordi 
nary  Presidential  canvass  for  the  fair  discussion 
of  political  questions ;  such  a  proceeding  would 
have  been  too  tame  and  insipid  for  them.  Their 
stomachs  craved  stronger,  more  game-flavored 
meat ;  hard  names  must  be  called ;  vengeance 
must  be  satisfied ;  the  President  must  be  politi 
cally  court-martialed  or  dragged  before  a  na 
tional  assize  to  be  tried  as  a  malefactor. 

In  the  Senate  the  Democrats  proper  kept  si 
lent  or  talked  about  business ;  I  give  them 
credit  for  wasting  but  little  time  ;  but  half  the 
last  session,  eight  months  in  length,  was  worn 
out  and  wasted  by  slanderous  electioneering 
harangues  aimed  at  the  Administration  and  its 
friends  by  men  badly  in,  need  of  being  reformed 


themselves.  These  self-righteous  and  noisy  or 
acles  pitched  the  key  in  which  the  anti-Grant 
chorus  was  to  be  sung,  and  hence  comes  the  ab 
sence  of  political  questions  and  the  presence  of 
personal  and  scandalous  issues.  The  public 
journals  and  newspaper  correspondence  from 
Washington,  controlled  by  these  "Liberals"— 
liberal  in  nothing  so  much  as  in  defaming  honest 
men  and  praising  and  helping  themselves — took 
hue  from  the  heart-burnings,  distempers  and 
ambitions  which  set  them  on.  "Anything  to 
beat  Grant"  was  the  motto,  and  it  gratified 
their  hate  and  spite  to  assail  the  President  per 
sonally,  and  to  heap  malignant  charges  upon 
him ;  thus  his  character,  his  integrity,  his  stand 
ing  as  a  man,  have  been  put  in  issue,  and  the 
people  are  compelled  to  pass  upon  his  guilt  or 
innocence.  The  case  has  been  so  put,  that  the 
question  is  not  merely  whether  Grant  shall  be 
President,  but  whether  Grant  shall  be  pronounc 
ed  by  the  nation  a  fool,  a  knave,  an  impostor, 
an  enemy  of  his  country.  Had  issue  been 
taken  upon  public  measures,  had  public  ques 
tions  been  raised,  whether  new  questions  or 
those  which  have  divided  parties  heretofore, 
a  popular  verdict  would  have  been  a  verdict 
only  between  partiess  and  policies,  and  princi 
ples.  Such  a  verdict  would  have  rested  upon 
public  grounds,  personal  and  disparaging  to 
no  one. 

If  the  political  views  the  President  represents 
are  not  those  of  a  majority  there  is  no  injustice 
and  no  reflection  upon  any  one  in  so  saying  and 
so  voting.  But  when  he  is  arraigned  for  ignor 
ance,  dishonesty  and  vice,  and  for  nothing  else,, 
the  case  is  different. 

PLATFORM    MADE    UP    OF    SLANDERS    OF    DIS 
APPOINTED   MEN. 

What  is  the  arraignment?  What  political 
position  held  by  the  Republican  Party  or  its. 
candidates  does  the  "Any thing-to-beat-Grant" 
coalition  deny?  Will  anyone  tell  me?  Read 
the  manifesto  put  forth  at  Cincinnati,  which  Mr. 
Greeley  did  over  in  improved  words,  as  he 
thought,  in  his  letter  of  acceptance.  Read  the 
address  lately  published  by  Mr.  Greeley  and  his 
committee,  soliciting  the  votes  of  the  people  of 
this  State.  These  papers,  in  so  far  as  they 
refer  to  the  Administration,  are  a  gross  personal 
libel  upon  the  President,  and  they  are  nothing 
more. 

Hear  the  words  of  the  self-constituted  crowd 
at  Cincinnati — that  motley  group  made  up  of  a 
few  respectable  men  who  have  since  repudiated 
it,  and  of  the  most  piebald,  disreputable  collec 
tion  to  be  scraped  from  the  gutters  and  sewers 
of  politics.  These  political  lazzaroni,  pretend 
ing  to  represent  States,  laid  down  the  platform 
on  which  Mr.  Greeley  thinks  he  is  running. 
See  how  it  reads  : 

The  President  of  the  United  States  has  openly  used 
the  powers  and  opportunities  of  his  high  office  for  the 
promotion  of  personal  ends. 

He  has  kept  notoriously  corrupt  and  unworthy  men  in 
places  of  power  and  responsibility,  to  the  detriment  ot 
the  public  interest. 

He  has  used  the  public  service  of  the  Government  as 
a  machinery  of  corruption  and  personal  influence,  and 
has  interfered,  with  tyrannical  arrogance,  in  the  pohticaS 
affairs  of  States  and  municipalities. 

He  has  rewarded  with  influential  and  lucrative  oraces, 


Senator  Coriklmifs  Great  Speech  at  New    York. 


men  who  have  acquired  his  favor  by  valuable  presents, 
thus  stimulating  the  demoralization  of  our  political  life  by 
his  conspicuous  example. 

He  has  shown  himself  deplorably  unequal  to  the  tasks 
imposed  upon  him  by  the  necessities  of  the  country,  and 
culpably  careless  of  the  responsibility  of  his  high  office. 

Mr.  Greeley 's  personal  backers  and  trainers 
recently  delighted  the  public  with  an  address, 
embroidered  with  the  rhetoric  and  signature 
of  Mr.  John  Cochrane.  This  paper,  gorgeous 
in  composition,  speaks  of  the  Cincinnati  fiasco 
as  "one  of  the  most  stately  and  brilliant  par 
liaments  ever  assembled  in  this  country. "  These 
rainbow-dyed  words  show  on  what  sky-scraping 
pinions  the  "Liberal"  eagle  soars.  See  how 
this  gloomy  and  peculiar  monarch  of  the -clouds 
swoops  down  on  the  poor  pigmy  and  truant  of 
Appomattox.  Observe  the  awful  obscurity, 
grand  even  in  parenthesis,  with  which  he  "goes 
for"  his  prey,  as  another  reformer  "went  for 
that  heathen  Chinee": 

The  history  of  the  Administration  is  a  shadowy  record 
of  discreditable  (sometimes  disgraceful)  acts — many  of 
them  blunders:  others,  crimes. 

He  has  repeatedly  shown  himself  on  the  one  hand  ig 
norant  of  the  laws,  and  on  the  other  defiant  of  them. 

He  has  accepted  gifts  from  flatterers,  for  which  he  has 
rendered  dishonorable  equivalents,  by  bestowing  public 
emoluments  on  obsequious  givers. 

These  are  but  three  of  the  seventeen  personal 
crimes,  of  which  the  bright  particular  Cochrane 
appears  as  the  avenging  angel.  Do  such  des 
picable  assertions  and  imputations  raise  any  po 
litical  or  party  issue  ? 

NOTHING    TANGIBLE    ABOUT   TARIFF,   AMNES 
TY,  OR   CIVIL   SERVICE    REFORM. 

The  tariff  resolution,  at  Cincinnati,  is  a  mere 
juggle — a  shallow  evasion,  by  which  no  one  of 
common  intelligence  has  a  right  to  be  cheated. 

The  resolution  about  Congress  and  "central 
ism,"  if  they  mean  anything,  refer  to  the  exercise 
of  powers  by  Congress  everyone  of  which  Mr. 
Greeley  approved  and  demanded  in  his  usual 
violent  and  unmeasured  language. 

The  amnesty  resolution  is  spent,  because  a 
general  amnesty  bill  was  passed  weeks  ago. 

Every  rebel  votes,  and  every  rebel  may  hold 
office  now,  except  Jefferson  Davis,  and  less 
than  two  hundred  others,  who  still  spurn  for 
giveness.  There  is  nothing  left  of  the  amnesty 
question,  unless  some  one  wants  to  mount  a 
dead  horse  in  behalf  of  Jefferson  Davis  and  his 
handful  of  cronies,  who  say  that  their  perjury 
needs  no  forgiveness,  and  seeks  none,  and  that 
they  have  no  use  just  now  in  that  way  for  those 
they  keep  to  sign  their  bail  bonds,  and  da  their 
other  chores. 

Where,  then,  is  the  political  issue  the  people 
are  to  pass  upon?  It  cannot  be  "civil  service 
reform,"  unless  dishonesty  is  imputed  to  the 
President.  He  is  for  civil  service  reform  ;  he 
recommended  it  and  inaugurated  it,  and  the 
Philadelphia  Convention  specially  declared  for 
it.  There  can  be  no  issue  of  that  kind,  except 
by  pretending  that  Grant  is  a  hypocrite,  and 
that  Greeley  is  not ;  and  neither  of  these  things 
would  be  easy  to  prove.  Mr.  Greeley  has 
plainly  and  repeatedly  avowed,  in  public  and  in 
private,  that  his  political  action  hinges  on  pat 
ronage  and  spoils ;  without  stopping  to  prove 
this  now,  I  will  recur  to  it  hereafter. 


The  coalition  presents  nothing  of  substance, 
on  which  parties  or  individuals  are  divided  m 
principle,  but  only  assaults  upon  the  President. 

This  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  a  challenge 
of  comparison  between  the  candidates.  The 
issue  is  narrowed  to  a  single  inquiry  :  Which  is 
personally  the  safest,  fittest  man  for  the  Presi 
dency?  That  is  the  question,  and  the  whole 
of  it. 

DEMOCRACY    GIVES    UP — WHAT    IS    ASKED    OP 
DEMOCRATS. 

Some  things,  however,  are  said  and  done  ef 
fectually  by  the  platform  and  nomination  of  our 
opponents.  They  blot  out  and  renounce  the 
time-honored  creed  of  the  Democratic  Party. 
That  creed  is  laid  aside  and  its  vital  points  re 
pudiated. 

It  is  fairly  admitted  that  Democratic  doctrines 
and  Democratic  candidates  cannot  stand  before 
the  judgment  of  the  country. 

The  Democracy  confesses  its  defeat  upon  the 
great  issues  of  the  century,  and  confesses  its 
error  also.  Equality  of  race ;  emancipation  of 
slaves ;  the  ballot  for  the  blacks  ;  a  protective 
tariff;  exemption  of  Government  bonds  from 
taxation  ;  paying  bonds  in  coin  ; — upon  these 
and  other  things,  the  Democracy  at  last  con 
fesses  itself  not  only  beaten  but  wrong,  and  the 
Republican  Party  victorious  and  right.  Stop 
ping  here,  the  homage  paid  to  the  Republican 
Party  would  be  great  indeed,  but  we  find  greater 
tribute  and  homage  still. 

Not  only  are  the  old  grounds  of  difference 
given  up,  but  no  new  ones  can  be  found. 
What  measure  or  doctrine  of  the  Republican 
Party,  again  I  ask,  have  our  opponents  ventur 
ed  to  attack  ? 

The  Republican  Party  has  been  in  power 
for  years,  responsible  for  all  legislation  in  the 
greatest  era  of  the  nation,  and  now  its  life-long 
rival  and  adversary  at  last  throws  up  the  sponge, 
not  daring  to  join  issue  upon  one  political  ques 
tion. 

Even  the  Kuklux  and  election  bills  are  noc 
matters  in  difference,  for  Mr.  Greeley  supported 
them  both,  with  all  his  virulent  vocabulary. 
My  own  part  in  preparing  and  pressing  the 
election  law  was,  I  remember,  the  occasion  of 
my  being  praised  in  the  Tribune.  This  puzzled 
me  at  the  time,  and  suggested  that  I  must 
have  been  doing  something  wrong,  because  the 
Tribune  marked  me  for  destruction  after  its 
editor  was  not  elected  to  the  Senate.  Mr. 
Greeley  must  have  been  elated  indeed  over  the 
Congressional  election  law,  when  his  exuber 
ance  became  so  great  that  he  could  write  a 
kind,  or  even  a  just  or  true,  word  of  me. 

The  only  instances  of  alleged  "centralism" 
being  measures  to  which  Mr.  Greeley  stands 
fully  committed,  the  candidate  and  the  plat 
form  together  leave  not  a  shred  of  anything 
Democratic.  As  if  to  abjure  the  last  vestige  of 
Democracy  and  wipe  out  its  very  memory, 
these  vaulting  managers  have  selected  as  their 
figurehead  a  professed  ultra  Republican,  for 
merly  -an  ultra  Whig,  and  they  ask  honest 
Democrats  to  vote  for  him,  against  a  man  bom 
and  bred  a  Democrat,  who  never  acted  with  the 
Republican  Party  till  after  the  war  had  raised 


The  President  and  His  Slanderers^ 


new  issues  on  which  Democrats  divided.  Demo 
crats  are  asked  to  vote  for  that  Republican 
who  "out-Heroded  Herod"  always  in  politics 
and  abuse,  and  who  did  more  than  any  other 
man  in  the  North  to  encourage  secession  and 
bring  on  the  \vnr.  A  Republican,  coming 
from  the  Whig  Party  with  such  a  record,  now 
asks  the  votes  of  Democrats  ! 

The  anti- Grant  managers  are  daring,  if  they 
are  not  silly.  They  attempt  to  crowd  down  the 
throats  of  Democrats  who  fought  the  Maine 
law,  the  man  who  drowned  all  other  voices  in 
his  outcries  for  penal  statutes  and  Sunday  laws, 
to  stop  by  force  the  drinking  even  of  lager-beer. 

WHY    SHOULD    DEMOCRATS    VOTE    FOR 
GREELEY? 

If  a  Democrat  was  running,  or  if  Democratic 
principles  were  in  the  field,  Democrats  might  be 
expected  to  vote  the  ticket ;  but  when  the  choice 
is  between  Republicans,  and  no  Democratic 
principle  is  at  stake,  Democrats  will  be  apt  to 
pick  and  choose  for  themselves  which  Republi 
can  they  will  vote  for,  if  they  vote  at  all. 

Upon  what  ground  will  patriotic  Democrats 
prefer  Greeley  to  Grant?  They  must  prefer 
Greeley  because  they  disapprove  Grant  person 
ally,  or  else  because  they  disapprove  some  po 
litical  doctrine  he  represents. 

Are  Democrats  for  repudiating  the  debt?  Are 
they  for  agitating  or  annulling  the  Thirteenth, 
Fourteenth  and  Fifteenth  Amendments  of  the 
Constitution?  Would  they  re-establish  slav 
ery?  Would  they  pay  the  rebel  war  debt,  or 
pensions  to  rebel  soldiers,  or  rebel  war  claims? 
Would  they  inflate  the  currency  again,  and  flood 
the  country  with  paper  money?  Are  Demo 
crats  against  reducing  taxes  and  expenses  ?  Are 
Democrats  opposed  to  peace  with  all  nations, 
and  stable  government  at  home  ?  These  ques 
tions  are  not  asked  to  impugn  the  position  of 
any  man,  but  for  the  opposite  reason. 

Pres.  Grant  being  tried  and  true  in  all  these 
things,  why  should  any  Union  man,  or  con 
servative,  or  business1  man,  or  patriot,  vote 
against  him,  even  if  his  competitor  was  a  safe 
and  fit  man  for  President  ?  Plainly  there  can 
be  no  reason,  unless  Grant  is  unworthy  of  confi 
dence  or  respect,  and  deserves  to  be  found  guilty 
of  the  crimes  and  vices  alleged  against  him.  To 
judge  this  question  we  must  examine  his  history 
and  lay  bare  his  life.  "The  tree  is  known  by 
its  fruit";  the  carpenter  by  his  chips;  the  man 
by  his  deeds. 

GRANT'S  EDUCATION  AND  BOYHOOD. 

Grant  cannot  be  illiterate,  or,  as  a  Greeley 
orator  told  an  audience  the  other  day,  "ignorant 
of  what  school-boys  know." 

He  was  educated  at  West  Point,  and  whoever 
graduates  in  that  exacting  school  must  have  an 
education  such  as  few  Americans  receive. 
Mental  culture  is  not  all  we  find  in  Grant  at 
West  Point.  His  letters  written  then  stamp 
him  with  a  character  enough  by  itself  to  refute 
the  worn  and  soiled  tavern  scandal  which  now 
offends  the  nostrils  of  the  nation.  Here  is  a 
letter  to  his  mother,  June  4,  1839.  He  was 
then  seventeen.  "As  the  twig  is  bent  the  tree 
is  inclined." 


Let  us  see  what  kind  of  a  boy  the  man  grew 
out  of. 

UNITED  STATES  WEST  POINT  MILITARY  ACADEMY, 
June  4,  1839. 

MY  DEAR  MOTHER  :  I  have  occasionally  been  called 
to  be  separated  from  you,  but  never  did  1  feei  the  full 
force  and  effect  of  this  separation  as  I  do  now.  I  seem 
alone  in  the  world  without  my  mother.  There  have  been 
so  many  ways  in  which  you  have  advised  me,  when,  in 
the  quiet  of  home,  I  have  been  pursuing  my  studies, 
that  you  cannot  tell  how  much  I  miss  you.  When  I  was 
busy  with  father  in  the  tannery,  and  on  the  farm,  we 
were  both  more  or  less  surrounded  by  others,  who  took 
up  our  attention  and  occupied  our  time.  But,  I  was  so 
often  alone  with  you,  and  you  spoke  to  me  so  frequently 
in  private,  that  the  solitude  of  my  situation  here  at  the 
Academy,  among  my  silent  books,  and  in  my  lonely  room, 
is  all  the  more  striking.  It  reminds  me  all  the  more 
forcibly  of  home,  and  most  of  all,  my  dear  mother,  of 
you.  But,  in  the  midst  of  all  this,  your  kind  instructions 
and  admonitions  are  ever  present  with  me.  I  trust  they 
may  never  be  absent  from  me  as  long  as  I  live.  How 
often  I  think  of  them  !  and  how  well  do  they  strengthe» 
me  in  every  good  word  and  work  ! 

My  dear  mother,  should  I  progress  well  with  my 
studies  at  West  Point,  and  become  a  soldier  for  my 
country,  I  am  looking  forward  with  hope  to  have  you 
spared  to  share  with  me  in  any  advancement  I  may 
make.  I  see  now,  in  looking  over  the  records  here,  how 
much  American  soldiers  of  the  right  stamp  are  indebted 
to  good  American  mothers  !  When  they  go  to  the  field, 
what  prayers  go  with  them  !  What  tender  testimony  of 
maternal  affection  and  counsel  are  in  their  knapsacks  ! 
I  am  struck,  in  looking  over  the  history  of  the  noble 
struggle  of  our  fathers  for  national  independence,  at  the 
evidence  of  the  good  influence  exerted  upon  them  by  the 
women  of  the  Revolution.  Ah  !  my  beloved  friend, 
how  can  the  present  generation  ever  repay  the  debt  it 
owes  the  patriots  of  the  past  for  the  sacrifices  they  have 
so  freely  and  richly  made  for  us  ?  We  may  well  ask, 
Would  our  country  be  what  it  is  now,  if  it  had  not  been 
for  the  greatness  of  our  patriotic  ancestors?  Let  me 
hear  from  you  by  letter  as  often  as  convenient,  and  send 
me  such  books  as  you  think  will  help  me.  They  can  be 
forwarded  through  the  courtesy  of  our  member  of 
Congress. 

Faithfully  and  most  lovingly  your  son, 

ULYSSES. 

To  his  father  he  writes  from  West  Point : 

I  find  much  here  that  makes  me  love  my  dear  native 
land  more  than  ever.  I  am  happy  in  the  fact  that  this 
stronghold  of  nature  is  safely  in  the  hands  of  the  United 
States.  Do  you  know,  father,  that  it  is  called  the  Gib 
raltar  of  America  ?  * 

As  I  return  from  my  walk,  refreshed  by  the  exercise, 
inspired  by  the  grand  and  varied  scenery,  and  better  pre 
pared  for  my  studies,  I  pass  by  the  cemetery  of  the 
Academy,  where  some  of  our  cherished  dead  repose. 
Here  is  the  monument  erected  by  our  grateful  country  to 
the  brave  hero,  Kosciusko,  who  fell  on  the  field  of  battle, 
on  American  soil,  fighting  for  the  liberties  of  mankind. 
You  remember,  father,  the  line  that  is  recorded  of  him  : 
"And  Freedom  shrieked  when  Kosciusko  fell." 

I  am  rendered  serious  by  the  impressions  that  crowd 
upon  me  here  at  West  Point.  My  thoughts  are  frequently 
occupied  with  the  hatred  I  am  made  to  feel  towards  trai 
tors  to  my  country,  as  I  look  around  me  on  the  memorials 
that  remain  of  the  black-hearted  treason  of  Arnold.  I  am 
full  of  a  conviction  of  scorn  and  contempt,  which  my 
young  and  inexperienced  pen  is  unable  to  write  in  this 
letter,  toward  the  conduct  of  any  man  who,  at  any  time, 
could  strike  at  the  liberties  of  such  a  nation  as  ours.  If 
ever  men  should  be  found  in  our  Union  base  enough 
to  make  the  attempt  to  do  this :  if,  like  Arnold,  they 
should  secretly  seek  to  sell  our  national  inheritance  for 
the  mess  of  pottage  of  wealth,  or  power,  or  section- 
West  Point  sternly  reminds  me  of  what  you,  my  father, 
would  have  your  son  do.  As  I  stand  here  in  this  national 
fort,  a  student  of  arms  under  our  country's  flag,  I  know  full 
well  how  you  would  have  me  act  in  such  an  emergency. 
I  trust  my.-future  conduct  in  such  an  hour  would  prove 
worthy  the  patriotic  instructions  you  have  given. 

Yours  obediently, 
ULYSSES  SYDNEY  GRANT. 

Had  the  boy  who  wrote  these  letters  a  good 
and  gentle  nature  ?  Was  he  well  grounded,  or 


Senator  Conkling^s  Great  Speech  at  New   York. 


afloat?  When  did  he  lose  the  moral  sense 
which  there  speaks  out  ? 

i  From  West  Point  he  went  to  act  a  subordi 
nate  part  in  the  Mexican  war.  He  acted  it 
bravely,  modestly  and  well.  The  Mexican  war 
being  over,  his  pay  in  the  regular  army  would 
have  gone  on,  and  he  might  have  lived  in  peace 
and  idleness  at  the  public  cost,  but,  unwilling  to 
be  a  drone,  he  became  a  tanner. 


THE 


TANNER   OF   GALENA." — WHAT   HE 
TANNED. 


Mr.  Sumner  withers  him  by  reminding  us 
that  "he  tanned  hides  at  Galena  for  a  few  hun 
dred  dollars  a  year."  He  did  not  masquerade 
as  a  wood  -chopper ;  he  did  not  figure  in  pic 
torials  as  a  fanner  ;  he  did  not  go  round  telling 
"  what  he  knew  about  "  anything  that  he  didn't 
understand  himself;  he  minded  his  own  busi 
ness,  and  let  other  people's  business  alone ;  but  he 
worked  with  his  hands  as  a  hewer  of  wood, 
which  he  sold  in  the  market,  and  wrought  out 
a  living  for  his  family  and  himself. 

From  the  breaking  out  of  the  rebellion,  his  ca 
reer  is  a  "  thrice-told  tale  " — the  world  knows  it 
by  heart.  When  the  flag  sank  at  Sumter,  he  did 
not  wait  to  be  called.  Without  commission, 
command,  uniform,  or  shoulder-straps,  he  start 
ed  for  the  field,  and  grasping  the  Stars  and 
Stripes,  he  carried  them  through  a  blaze  of  victo 
ries  such  as  no  mortal  man  before  him  had  won. 

While  Senators  who  now  hawk  at  him  were 
lolling  for  a  fourth  term  on  cushions,  and  evis 
cerating  encyclopedias,  books  of  quotations,  and 
classical  dictionaries,  the  Tanner  of  Galena 
swept  rebellion  from  the  Valley  of  the  Mississip 
pi,  and  the  Father  of  Waters  went  unvexed  to 
the  sea. 

Lincoln  and  Stanton,  who  reposed  unmeas 
ured  confidence  in  him,  called  him  at  once  from 
the  victorious  fields  of  the  West  to  the  Depart 
ment  of  the  Potomac,  that  Golgotha,  where 
army  after  army,  the  very  flower  of  the  nation, 
had  melted  away.  He  came  to  the  wilderness 
of  Virginia,  when  that  traitorous  Commonwealth 
had  become  the  rendezvous  of  the  allied  armies 
of  rebellion,  and  when  the  rebel  chiefs  were 
boasting  that  in  the  fastnesses  of  the  Blue  Ridge 
they  could  defy  the  world  in  arms.  He  march 
ed  from  Washington,  and  he  measured  no  back 
ward  step  until  he  had  set  his  foot  upon  the 
shattered  fragments  of  the  greatest  military 
power  an  invading  army  ever  overthrew.  He 
solved  the  problem  which  had  baffled  all  others, 
and  preserved  a  nationality  after  the  world 
thought  it  had  gone  down. 

How  stood  he  then?  The  nation  leaned  and 
reposed  upon  him,  and  blessed  him.  Both 
hemispheres  gazed  at  him,  as  the  prodigy  and 
wonder  of  the  age. 

The  Democrats  sought  his  consent  to  nomi 
nate  him  for  the  Presidency  without  platform  or 
pledge,  but  he  declined.  His  integrity  taught 
him  that  when  a  party  chooses  a  candidate  from 
the  other  side,  somebody  is  to  be  cheated  ;  and 
by  Grant's  consent  no  one  ever  was  or  ever  will 
be  cheated. 

But  the  Democratic  managers  ddored  him,  and 
saw  him  only  resplendent  with  greatness  and  with 
virtues.  He  was  not  unfit  for  President  then ; 


he  was  the  fittest  of  all  his  countrymen.  He  did 
net  become  unfit  until  three  years'  experience 
had  ripened  and  enlarged  his  knowledge.  He 
did  not  become  unfit  while  the  patronage  held 
out,  and  while  unclean  fingers  were  allowed  to 
fumble  it. 

In  his  recent  modest  letter  of  acceptance  he 
says,  "Experience  may  guide  in  avoiding  mis 
takes  inevitable  with  novices  in  all  professions 
and  in  all  occupations." 

WHAT  THE   NEW  YORK  WORLD  SAID. 

He  was  a  "novice"  when  the  New  York 
World,  then  as  now,  the  ablest  opposition  paper, 
said  on  the  I  ith  of  April,  1865  : 

Gen.  Grant's  history  should  teach  us  to  discriminate 
better  than  we  Americans  are  apt  to  do  between  glitter 
and  solid  work.  Our  proneness  to  run  after  demagogues 
and  spouters  may  find  a  wholesome  corrective  in  the 
study  of  such  a  character  as  his.  The  qualities  by  which 
great  things  are  accomplished  are  here  seen  to  have  no 
necessary  connection  with  showy  and  superficial  accom 
plishments. 

Ulysses  S.  Grant,  the  tanner,  Ulysses  S.  Grant  tke 
unsuccessful  applicant  for  the  post  of  City  Surveyor  of 
St.  Louis,  Ulysses  S.  Grant,  the  driver  into  that  city  of 
his  two-horse  team,  with  a  load  of  wood  to  sell,  had 
within  him  every  manly  quality,  which  will  cause  the 
name  of  Lieut. -Gen.  Grant  to  live  forever  in  history. 
His  career  is  a  lesson  in  practical  democracy — it  is  a  quiet 
satire  on  the  dandyism,  the  puppyism,  and  the  shallow 
affectation  of  our  fashionable  exquisites,  as  well  as 
upon  the  swagger  of  our  plausible,  glib-tongued  dem 
agogues. 

Apply  to  Gen.  Grant  what  test  you  will  ;  measure  him 
by  the  magnitude  of  the  obstacles  he  has  surmounted, 
by  the  value  of  the  positions  he  has  gained,  by  the  fame 
of  the  antagonist  over  whom  he  has  triumphed,  by  the 
achievements  of  his  most  illustrious  co-workers,  by  the 
sureness  with  which  he  directs  his  idomitable  energy  t» 
the  vital  point  which  is  the  key  of  a  vast  field  of  opera 
tions,  or  by  that  supreme  test  of  consummate  ability— the 
absolute  completeness  of  his  results — and  he  vindicates 
<fcis  claim  to  stand  next  after  Napoleon  and  Wellington 
among  the  great  soldiers  of  this  country,  if  not  on  a  level 
with  the  latter. 

WHAT    HORACE   GREELEY   SAID. 

He  was  not  quite  a  novice  when  Horace 
Greeley  said  these  things : 

Grant  and  his  policy  deserve  the  very  highest  credit. 

The  people  of  the  United  States  know  Gen.  Grant — 
have  known  all  about  him  since  Donelson  and  Vicksburg 
— they  do  not  know  his  slanderers,  and  do  not  care  to 
know  them. 

While  asserting  the  right  of  every  Republican  to  his 
untrammeled  choice  of  a  candidate  for  next  President 
until  a  nomination  is  made,  I  venture  to  suggest  that 
Gen.  Grant  will  be  far  better  qualified  for  that  momen 
tous  trust  in  1872  than  he  was  in  1868. 

We  are  led  by  him  who  first  taught  our  armies  t» 
conquer  in  the  West,  and,  subsequently,  in  the  East  also. 
Richmond  would  not  come  to  us  until  we  sent  Grant 
after  it,  and  then  it  had  to  come.  He  has  never  yet  been 
defeated,  and  never  will  be.  He  will  be  as  great  and 
successful  on  the  field  of  politics  as  on  that  of  arms. 

Yes  :  Gen.  Grant  has  failed  to  gratify  some  eager 
aspirations,  and  has  thereby  incurred  some  intense 
hatreds.  These  do  not  and  will  not  fail,  and  his  admin 
istration  will  prove  at  least  equally  vital.  We  shall  hear 
lamentation  after  lamentation  over  his  failures  from 
those  whose  wish  is  father  to  the  thought  ;  but  the 
American  people  let  them  pass  unheeded.  Their  strong 
arm  bore  him  triumphantly  through  the  war  and  into 
the  White  House,  and  they  still  uphold  and  sustain  him  : 
and  they  never  failed  and  never  will. 

He  was  not  altogether  a  novice  when,  in  Sep 
tember,  1871,  Mr.  Greeley  wrote,  and  sent  to 
the  Republican  State  Convention  for  adoption, 
these  resolutions : 

II.  In  this  alarming  crisis  in  City  and  State  affairs,  the 
Republican  party  refers  all  good  citizens  to  its  record,  as 


The  President  and  His  Slanderers. 


their  warrant  for  giving  it  their  fullest  confidence  and 
support  in  the  campaign,  now  formally  opening,  of  the 
honest  men  against  the  thieves. 

It  abolished  slavery. 

It  led  in  the  suppression  of  the  rebellion. 

It  preserved  and  enlarged  the  Union. 

It  promptly  reduced  the  enormous  forces  thus  required 
to  a  peace  footing. 

It  has  reduced  the  debt" over  two  hundred  and  fifty 
millions  of  dollars  in  the  last  three  years. 

It  has  simultaneously  reduced  public  taxation  over  two 
hundred  and  fifty  millions  of  dollars  per  annum. 

It  has  preserved  peace  on  the  border. 

It  has  won  a  friendly  adjustment  of  the  threatening 
troubles  with  Great  Britain. 

III.  For  its  conspicuous  share  in  this  beneficent  rec 
ord  we  endorse  the  National  Republican  Adminis 
tration. 

These  resolutions  were  written  only  a  little 
while  ago,  and  all  the  slanders  to  this  day  in 
vented  against  the  President,  had  long  been  cur 
rent  then. 

"GIFT-TAKING." 

But  let  us  go  back  a  moment,  to  Grant,  be 
fore  he  seriously  thought  of  being  President, 
and  when  he  was  only  the  idol  of  the  nation. 
Returning  from  the  field,  covered  with  glory, 
but  poor  in  money,  the  affluent,  whose  fortunes 
he  had  saved,  met  him  with  munificent  offerings. 
In  this  they  followed  the  customs  of  ancient 
and  modern  times. 

The  austere  republics  of  antiquity  enriched 
and  ennobled  their  heroes  returning  from  vic 
tory.  England,  with  an  unwritten  Constitution, 
and  an  omnipotent  Parliament,  which  a  lawyer 
once"  said  ' '  could  do  anything  but  make  a  man 
a  woman,  "has  enriched  her  Generals  both  by 
acts  of  Parliament  and  by  voluntary  subscriptions. 

In  the  United  States,  the  Constitution  does 
not  permit  Congress  to  act  in  such  matters  ; 
here  they  rest  wholly  in  the  voluntary  action  of 
individuals,  and  that  public  presentations  to 
heroes  involved  turpitude  in  givers  or  recipi 
ents,  has  been  first  found  out  by  the  spurious  re 
formers  and  libelers  now  clamoring  for  notice. 

Wellington  received  from  his  Government, 
and  his  neighbors,  more  than  $3,000,000. 
British  citizens  of  Calcutta  made  him  presents, 
the  officers  of  the  army  gave  him  $10,000,  the 
House  of  Commons  voted  him  $1,000,000,  and  a 
mansion  and  estate  were  purchased  for  him  by 
subscription,  at  a  cost  of  $1,300,000.  Besides 
this,  he  was  three  times  ennobled,  twice  by  Eng 
land,  and  once  by  Spain. 

Oliver  Cromwell,  for  deeds  done  in  civil  war, 
received  $32,500  a  year  in  gifts.  Marlborough 
was  given  a  stately  palace  and  a  splendid  for 
tune.  Nelson  and  his  family  were  ennobled, 
and  received  $70,000.  Jewels  and  money  were 
given  to  Fairfax  for  services  in  civil  war. 

The  Generals  and  Admirals  of  England  and 
France  have  generally  been  recipients  of  great 
pecuniary  benefits.  In  England  and  elsewhere, 
the  custom  of  presents  to  public  men  has  gone 
beyond  the  army  and  the  navy.  Richard  Cob- 
den,  a  civilian,  in  token  of  political  service  only, 
was  given  by  subscription  three  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  dollars.  John  Bright  has  just 
received  costly  gifts. 

America,  younger  and  poorer,  with  few  wars 
to  breed  heroes,  has  been  less  lavish  than  older 
nations  ;  but  Americans  have  not  been  stingy. 
Gen.  McClellan,  perhaps,  begins  the  list  of 


largely-rewarded  Generals.  His  active  service 
ended  before  the  war  was  over,  and  his  Demo 
cratic  admirers,  prior  to  nominating  him  for  the 
Presidency,  presented  him  a  costly  house  and 
a  large  purse,  amounting  in  all  to  a  hundred 
thousand  dollars. 

To  Sherman,  Sheridan,  Farragut  and  Grant 
large  sums  were  given.  To  Stanton's  family 
and  to  Rawlins's,  were  given  more  than  a  hun 
dred  thousand  each.  Were  these  things  dishon 
orable?  Was  it  wrong  for  Gen.  Grant  to 
accept  such  gifts  ?  The  charge  is  an  insult  to 
the  nation  who  witnessed  and  applauded  the 
proceeding ;  it  is  an  imputation  upon  those  who 
gave,  as  much  as  upon  him  who  received.  It 
cannot  have  been  dishonorable  or  improper  for 
him  to  accept  a  gift,  without  being  dishonorable 
and  improper  to  offeV  it. 

How  mean  must  the  cant  and  snivel  we  hear 
seem  to  the  people  of  Germany  just  now.  Bis 
marck,  though  Chancellor  and  Prime  Minister, 
has  just  received  as  a  gift,  in  token  of  his  ser 
vices  in  the  recent  war,  a  magnificent  landed 
estate,  worth  more  than  was-  given  to  all  our 
Generals  ;  and  Bismarck,  in  like  token,  has 
been  made  a  prince.  Gen.  Von  Moltke,  for  his 
services  in  the  German-Franco  War,  has  been 
given  $300,000  ;  and  Germany  has  set  apart 
from  the  French  indemnity  fund,  four  million 
dollars,  to  be  distributed  in  gifts  to  her  heroes. 
Do  you  believe  that  any  German,  or  any  man 
with  a  German  heart  in  his  bosom,  will  ever  be 
mean  enough  to  throw  these  gifts  in  the  face  of 
those  who  earned  and  accepted  them  ?  If  there 
is  a  man  mean  enough  to  do  it,  he  will  be  safer 
in  the  Greeley  menagerie  than  he  would  be  in 
any  hiding  place  in  Germany. 

Yet  gift-taking,  forsooth,  is  paraded  by  po 
litical  Pharisees.  One  thing  is  noticeable  ;  the 
men.  who  screech  about  gift-taking  are  those 
who  never  gave  a  cent,  and  who  were  never 
openly  offered  a  cent — certainly  not  for  any  hon 
orable  service  rendered  to  their  country.  The 
charge  that  Grant  accepted  any  gift  after  he  be 
came  President,  or  after  he  was  nominated,  is 
wholly  false.  He  has  accepted  nothing  of  value 
since  his  first  nomination — not  even  a  carriage 
and  horses — although  Lincoln,  and  Buchanan, 
and  Pierce,  and  Taylor,  and  other  Presidents,  did 
accept  carriages  and  horses  after  their  election. 

"GIFT-BEARING   GREEKS." 

But  it  is  said  that  men  who  subscribed  to  gifts 
have  been  appointed  to  office,  and  the  insinua 
tion  is  that  they  were  appointed  because  they 
subscribed  to  gifts. 

The  fact  that  hundreds  who  gave  have  never 
been  appointed  to  anything  would  of  itself  seem 
to  disprove  the  charge  that  official  patronage  has 
been  used  to  re-pay  gifts.  Only  three — or  at 
most  four — contributors  to  the  funds  raised  for 
Gen.  Grant  have  ever  been  offered  appointments, 
and  it  would  seem  far-fetched  to  explain  the  se 
lection  of  three  for  a  reason  applying  to  more 
than  three  hundred  who  were  never  selected  at 
all.  But  the  facts  answer  the  charge. 

MR.    A.  T.   STEWART   AND    MR.    BORIE. 

Mr.  A.  T.  Stewart  subscribed  to  the  Grant  fund; 
so  did  every  leading  man  in  the  City  of  New 


Senator  Conkling's  Great  Speech  at  New    York. 


York  who  then  supported  the  war  and  the  Re 
publican  Party.  No  man  on  Manhattan  Island 
who  would  have  been  thought  of  for  the  Cabinet 
refused  to  subscribe.  A  man  of  wealth  and 
prominence  belonging  to  the  Union  party  at  that  v 
time,  who  had  refused  to  share  in  an  offering  to 
a  Union  General,  would  have  been  as  mean  and 
as  marked  as  a  member  of  a  church  who  should 
refuse  to  pay  his  part  to  the  minister.  The  call 
was  general,  and  for  the  wealthy  who  had  sup 
ported  the  war  to  give  was  a  matter  of  course. 
When  Gen.  Grant  became  President,  had  he  nam 
ed  for  his  Cabinet  E.  D.  Morgan,  George  Op- 
dyke,  Jackson  S.  Schultz,  William  E.  Dodge, 
Henry  Clews,  or  any  other  leading  merchant  or 
banker  who  supported  him,  it  would  have  turned 
out  that  he  too  was  a  "gift-bearing  Greek." 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  Mr.  Borie,  of  Phila 
delphia,  the  late  Secretary  of  the  navy ;  the  only 
difference  being,  that  Mr.  Stewart  was  willing  to 
accept  office,  and  Mr.  Borie  utterly  refused  andde- 
clinedit,  consenting  at  last,  under  protest,  to  serve 
only  for  a  short  time.  These  Cabinet  Ministers 
were  selected  for  two  reasons:  First,  theirsupposed 
fitness,  and  second,  because  they  were  not  "politi 
cians."  Mr.  Stewart's  success  and  mastership  of 
the  details  of  a  vast  and  varied  business  convinced 
the  President  that  he  might  render  great  services 
as  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  Mr.  Borie,  a  retired 
merchant  and  importer  and  shipper  and  ship-own 
er,  was  believed  to  have  large  experience  and 
knowledge  applicable  to  the  navy  department. 

These  facts  by  themselves  might  not  have 
caused  these  two  selections,  because  other  men 
might  have  been  found  qualified,  and  at  the 
same  time  known  in  political  affairs. 

THE   TRIBUNE   AT   THE    BOTTOM   OF    IT. 

The  New  York  Tribune,  and  the  newspapers 
which  followed  it,  or  chimed  in  with  it,  had 
more  to  do  than  all  else,  with  bringing  about 
the  nomination  of  Mr.  Stewart  and  Mr.  Borie, 
and  of  others  unknown  in  public  affairs. 

The  Tribune  had  vociferated  against  "politi 
cians";  it  had  conjured  the  President  to  avoid 
"politicians,"  and  had  proclaimed  again  and 
again  that  the  country  had  a  right  to  expect  of 
Gen.  Grant  that  "politicians"  would  not  be  put 
in  high  places,  but  that  new  men  would  be 
brought  in.  Listening  to  this  hollow  bluster, 
echoed  in  many  public  journals,  the  President 
was  misled  as  to  the  popular  judgment. 

His  own  wisdom  taught  him  that  if  you  want 
a  lawyer  you  should  select  a  man  who  has  prov 
ed  himself  a  lawyer ;  that  if  you  want  a  doctor, 
you  had  better  take  one  who  has  been  tried;  and 
so  if  you  want  an  agent  to  manage  public  affairs, 
you  had  better  take  a  man  experienced  in  such 
affairs.  But  Mr.  Greeley  insisted  that  a  Cabinet 
should  be  chosen  upon  the  principle  on  which 
he  is  trying  to  be  President,  viz.,  passing  over 
all  the  men  whom  you  know  to  be  fit,  and  tak 
ing  a  man  at  a  venture  with  no  reason  to  believe 
him  to  be  fit.  Indeed,  Mr.  Greeley  once  told  the 
President  that,  in  his  opinion,  offices  should 
never  be  given  to  those  who  could  take  care  of 
themselves,  but  should  be  kept  for  those  who 
couldn't  make  a  living  in  any  other  way.  Much 
has  been  said  about  President  Grant's  choice  of 
his  Cabinet,  but  those  who  know  its  inside  his 
tory  know  that  the  very  men  who  are  now  hound 


ing  the  President  warmlyapproved  of  the  persons, 
named,  especially  of  Mr.  Stewart. 

THE    LAW    AND    THE     TRUTH   IN    MR.    STEW 
ART'S   CASE. 

The  provisions  of  law  making  Mr.  Stewart 
ineligible  were  as  much  out  of  the  minds  of 
others  as  of  the  President. 

Mr.  Stewart  was  unanimously  confirmed  by 
the  Senate,  as  were  the  other  Cabinet  nomina 
tions  now  said  to  be  so  bad  ;  and  yet  there  sat 
Sumner  and  Tipton,  and  Schurr  and  Trumbull, 
and  the  other  new-light  oracles,  and  appointed, 
because  the  President  without  the  Senate  could 
.  not  appoint,  A.  T.  Stewart  and  the  rest.  Sev 
eral  old  statutes  forbid  importers  to  hold  such 
places,  and  upon  the  President's  attention  being 
called  to  this,  he  submitted  to  the  Senate  a  sug 
gestion  that  the  law  be  so  changed  as  to  allow 
Mr.  Stewart  to  act  as  Secretary  of  the  Treasury. 
When  he  reflected  on  the  subject,  however,  the 
President  did  what  no  small  man  could  have 
done.  He  saw  the  error  ;  he  did  not  say  the 
Senate  was  as  much  to  blame  as  he  was,  or  as 
ignorant  as  he  was,  or  that  the  Senate,  having 
confirmed  Mr.  Stewart,  must  reconsider  its 
action  or  share  the  responsibility  of  getting  out 
of  the  predicament ;  but  he  took  the  whole 
blame  himself.  He  said,  "  This  is  my  mistake; 
I  will  correct  it."  He  immediately  withdrew 
his  message  recommending  the  law's  repeal, 
and  then  he  did  the  disagreeable  duty  of  appri 
sing  Mr.  Stewart  that  his  proffered  deed  of 
trust,  pronounced  sufficient  by  certain  Senators, 
now  ranting  "reformers,"  would  not  do,  and 
that  nothing  would  do  except  to  resign  and  let 
another  take  the  place.  The  President's  man 
liness  in  meeting  everything  and  shirking 
nothing  on  this  occasion,  raised  him  greatly  in 
the  estimation  of  all  just  beholders.  He  offen 
ded  Mr.  Stewart,  and  impaired  his  friendship, 
and  yet  the  bald  pretense  is  now  made  that 
he  used  official  power  to  recompense  a  gift. 

MR.   MOSES    H.    GRINNELL. 

Mr.  Moses  H.  Grinnell  was  a  subscriber  to  the 
Grant  fund.  He  was  appointed  Collector  of 
New  York,  greatly  to  the  satisfaction  of  Mr. 
Greeley  and  the  motley  crew  which  follows  him. 
Did  you  ever  hear  that  Grinnell's  subscription 
was  any  objection  to  his  appointment  ?  When 
Mr.  Grinnell  resigned  the  Collectorship  he  be 
came  a  Tribune  martyr.  He  then  asked  the 
President  for  the  Naval  Office,  and  the  President 
yielded  to  his  request.  Did  you  ever  hear  this 
objected  to  because  Grinnell  was  a  "gift-bear 
ing  Greek"?  When  members  of  Congress  and 
Senators  from  other  States,  Massachusetts  for 
one,  urged  the  President  to  appoint  Mr.  Lafiin 
Naval  Officer,  Mr.  Grinnell  was  displaced,  and 
then  the  very  men  who  now  prate  about  ap 
pointing  those  who  made  presents,  denounced 
the  President  for  ingratitude  to  Grinnell,  on  the 
ground  that  Grinnell  had  subscribed  money  for 
the  President.  As  Nasby  would  say,  "sich  is  life.H 

No  man  who  knows  President  Grant,  unless 
he  be  knave  or  fool,  for  a  moment  believes  that 
the  President  ever  dreamed  of  prostituting  his  of 
fice  to  pay  a  debt  of  his  own,  or  to  bribe,  or  re 
ward,  or  repay  the  givers  of  money  to  him. 


8 


The  President  and  His  Slanderers. 


THE  PRESIDENT'S  RICHES. 
The  "  Liberal "  idea  of  decency  and  manly 
war,  forces  me  to  speak  of  another  thing  which 
will  grate  upon  your  ears.  The  political  scav 
engers  pretend  that  the  President  has 
grown  rich,  as  President,  by  illicit  gain,  and 
they  parade  his  property  by  millions.  We  have 
fallen  on  soi'ry  times,  when  the  Chief  Magistrate 
of  the  country,  with  a  fame  so  great  and  pure, 
must  give  account  of  his  private  property  in  art- 
swer  to  electioneering  falsehoods.  The  Presi 
dent  would  disdain  to  do  it ;  I  have  no  author 
ity  to  do  it ;  1  do  not  assume  to  do  it  on  his 
behalf;  but  on  behalf  of  the  party  and  the 
cause  he  represents  I  venture  to  state  the  facts. 
At  Galena,  where  he  "tanned  hides,"  he 
owned  a  house,  and  during  the  war  he  invested 
the  savings  from  his  pay  in  some  lots  in  Chi 
cago,  and  in  some  shares  of  street  railway  stock. 
Mrs.  Grant  inherited  her  share  in  her  father's 
farm  in  Missouri,  and  they  bought  out  the  other 
heirs  with  a  portion  of  the  hundred  thousand 
dollars  presented  by  citizens  of  New  York. 
This  one  hundred  thousand  dollars  also  paid 
for  a  house  in  Washington,  which  was  subse 
quently  sold  to  Gen.  Sherman,  and  a  cottage 
and  grounds  were  bought  at  Long  Branch  after 
the  Washington  house  was  sold.  The  people 
ef  Philadelphia  presented  a  house,  which  rents 
for  about  two  thousand  dollars  a  year.  This 
completes  the  property  of  the  President,  with 
one  exception. 

Some  years  ago  he  purchased  ten  thousand 
dollars,  in  nominal  value,  of  the  stock  of  the  Sen 
eca  Stone  Company ;  to  this  day  it  has  paid 
nothing,  partly  because  the  President  has  inter 
fered  to  prevent  Seneca  stone  being  adopted  as 
building  material  for  the  Government.  One  of 
the  plans  submitted  for  the  new  State  Depart 
ment  required  the  use  of  Seneca  stone,  and,  be 
cause  of  his  being  a  stockholder,  the  President 
refused  to  allow  the  plan  to  be  even  considered. 
The  other  stockholders  complained  of  this,  say 
ing  they  were  punished  because  the  President 
owned  stock  ;  the  President  replied,  expressing 
his  regret,  and  saying  that  he  would  sell  his 
stock  or  give  it  away,  except  for  imputations  cast 
upon  him  by  political  opponents  because  of  his 
ownership  ;  but  he  deemed  it  unsuitable  even  to 
seem  to  defer  to  such  calumny  by  panting  with 
his  stock. 

Here,  then,  is  the  sum  total  of  the  President's 
possessions  ;  and  they  embrace  no  cigars  smug 
gled  in  the  dispatch  bag,  no  costly  works  of  art 
or  rare  wines  bestowed  by  foreigners,  no  testi 
monials  sent  from  other  lands,  in  gratitude  for 
efforts  to  tarnish  the  fair  fame  of  his  country. 
Every  dollar  he  owns  came  from  sources  open 
as  the  clay,  and  every  month  of  his  Presidency 
has  made  him  poorer  than  the  month  before  ; 
and  yet  the  country  and  Congress  are  disgraced 
by  inuendoes  and  poisonous  hints  that  vast  wealth 
has  been  amassed  in  the  Presidential  office.  •» 

GRANT   NO   MONEY-MAKER     AND    NO    OFFICE- 
SEEKER. 

Had  wealth  gained  in  office  been  Grant's  aim, 
he  would  never  have  been  President.  As  General 
of  the  Army  he  stood  the  foremost  man  of  all 
the  earth.  His  pay  was  for'life,  and  was  nearly, 


if  not  quite,  as  great  annually  as  the  Presidential 
salary.  In  money  value  and  money-making 
opportunity,  as  well  as  in  ease  and  freedom,  his 
position  then  was  unmeasurably  better  than  the 
*  Presidency  for  four  years  or  eight.  We  know 
the  Presidency  sought  him,  and  not  he  the 
Presidency  ;  but  had  avarice  been  his  thought, 
he  would  have  refused  the  Presidency,  and 
kept  the  life-place  of  General. 

The  Presidential  salary  has  not  lured  him  now. 
We  hear  of  "his  pretentions,"  and  of  his  "in 
sisting  upon  being  a  candidate";  yet,  first  and 
last,  he  never  made  himself  a  candidate,  and 
never,  to  my  knowledge,  has  he  expressed  a 
wish  to  be  re-elected.  So  far  from  it,  that  for 
more  than  a  year  his  friends  were  uneasy  with 
solicitude  lest  he  should  withhold  absolutely  the 
use  of  his  name. 

In  place  of  dividing  or  hazarding  the  Repub 
lican  Party  by  seeking  a  renomination,  he  never 
consented  to  stand  a  second  time  until  he  was 
assured  on  every  hand  that  the  party  demanded 
him  as  the  only  man  who  could  not  be  beaten ; 
and  my  firm  conviction  is,  that,  had  no  asper 
sion  been  cast  upon  him,  he  would  personally 
gladly  be  mustered  out. 

More  than  a  year  ago,  expressing  to  me  pri 
vately  his  earnest  wish  to  leave  public  toil,  he 
said  that  at  West  Point  he  counted  the  days, 
the  hours,  and  even  the  minutes  to  elapse,  be 
fore  he  should  be  graduated,  and  that,  with  a 
like  eagerness,  he  counted  the  time  that  would 
complete  his  Presidential  service;  and  often, 
before  vindictive  injustice  had  roused  him  to 
resistance,  those  who  knew  him  best,  and  among 
them  the  ablest  and  purest  members  of  the 
Senate,  continually  expressed  solicitude  lest  he 
should  refuse  to  run  again,  and  leave  the  party 
distracted  by  rivalries,  and  with  no  candidate 
so  strong. 

But  when  the  shower  of  mud,  and  the  beating 
of  gongs,  and  the  foul-mouthed  uproar  burst 
upon  him,  all  felt  that  we  were  safe.  Grant  never 
scares  well  at  all,  and  is  never  driven  when 
courage  can  make  a  stand  ;  and  the  two  debts 
the  Republican  party  owes  to  the  deserters  who 
have  attempted  to  betray  it  are,  first,  that  they 
cleansed  and  reformed  the  party  by  leaving  it  ; 
and  second,  that  they  have  insured  it  a  candidate 
who,  in  the  words  of  Horace  Greeley,  "never 
has  been  defeated  and  never  will  be." 

The  assaults  made  upon  him  at  once  swelled 
the  tide  in  his  favor,  and  the  determination  to 
renominate  him  soon  became  obvious  even  to 
those  who  hated  most  to  see  it. 

Then  came  the  next  effort  to  throw  dust  in  tne 
people's  eyes.  The  New  York  Tribune,  and 
other  journals,  which  for  a  year  had  been  doing 
the  worse  than  menial  offices  of  the  Democratic 
party,  raised  a  yell  that  "the  office-holders  were 
going  to  renominate  Grant."  This  bald  tale 
had  its  run  until  the  Philadelphia  Convention 
met.  It  then  turned  out  that,  among  seven  hun 
dred  and  fifty  delegates,  there  were  not  thirty 
office-holders,  a  thing  unexampled  in  American 
politics.  No  National  Convention  of  the  party  in 
power  ever  met  before,  in  which  men  holding  offi 
cial  station  were  not  largely  present.  Perhaps  no 
single  precinct  in  the  whole  country  so  effectu 
ally  gave  the  lie  to  the  pretense  that  the  office- 


Senator   Conklingls^Great^  Speech jat  New    York. 


holders  controlled  the  people,  as  the  Seventh 
Ward  of  the  City  of  Boston,  the  ward  in  which 
Mr.  Sumner  lives.  There,  unde'r  his  own  vine 
and  fig  tree,  where  he  carefully  superintended 
the  selection  of  "office-holders,"  the  primary 
meeting  brought  out  unusual  numbers  ;  the  Re 
publicans  turned  out  en  masse  and  voted  unani 
mously  for  Grant.  Mr.  Sumner,  in  his  opposi 
tion,  could  not  command  a  vote. 

THE   PHILADELPHIA   CONVENTION — HENRY 
WILSON. 

The  roll-call  in  the  National  Convention  was 
answered  by  a  chorus  of  States,  and  with  a 
unanimity  and  a  spirit  which  made  the  Conven 
tion  the  most  remarkable  ever  held,  and  the  in 
dorsement  the  most  flattering  and  pronounced 
ever  given  to  a  candidate.  The  announced  wish 
of  Mr.  Colfax  to  withdraw  from  public  life,  left 
the  Convention  without  unity  of  sentiment  as  to 
the  second  place  on  the  ticket ;  and  the  choice 
fell  upon  the  man  whom  Mr.  Wade  has  well 
described  "as  the  incarnation  of  American  citi 
zenship." 

Born  a  child  of  poverty  and  toil,  the  Natick 
Cobbler,  during  a  long  life  of  purity  and  public 
service,  had  won  a  place  in  the  respect  and  good 
will  of  his  countrymen  which  made  it  fit  that  the 
second  office  in  the  Republic  should  be  held  by 
Henry  Wilson.  Without  the  contrast  between 
his  colleague  and  himself,  the  prize  might  not 
have  fallen  to  him.  But  the  inexcusable  con 
duct  of  Mr.  Sumner  led  the  Convention  to  pre 
fer  Mr.  Wilson  for  Vice- President,  for  his  own 
great  merit,  and  also  because  his  nomination 
would  record  a  national  judgment  against  the 
pretention  that  the  party  belongs  to  any  man,  or 
is  subject  to  the  whim  or  dictation  of  any  knot 
of  men,  however  petted  in  the  past.  Mr.  Wil 
son  has  been  a  Senator  many  years,  a  Senator 
during  Gen.  Grant's  whole  military  and  civil  ser 
vice.  He  has  at  all  times  upheld  Republican 
measures,  and  therefore  is  answerable,  as  he 
wishes  to  be,  for  the  acts  of  the  party  and  the" 
policy  of  the  Administration.  The  objections 
to  either  candidate  apply  to  both,  and  can  be 
argued  together. 

The  Administration  is  on  trial.  Charges  are 
made  against  it,  and  the  Republican  ticket  de 
serves  defeat  unless  these  charges,  as  far  as  they 
are  worthy  of  notice,  can  be  fully  met.  If  such 
changes  were  ever  canvassed  before  in  a  Presi 
dential  election,  they  were  used  as  make-weights 
to  go  with  other  and  very  different  things. 
Never  before  were  such  charges  alone  the  theme 
of  popular  consideration. 

WASHINGTON   AND   OTHERS  SLANDERED. 

Never  before  did  a  political  party  plant  itself 
upon  personalities  and  scandal,  and  upon  noth 
ing  else.  George  Washington  was  visited  with 
loathsome  abuse  by  his  political  opponents. 
During  the  pendency  of  Jay's  treaty,  to  which 
Washington  was  earnestly  devoted,  Chief  Justice 
Marshall  informs  us  that  Washington's 
-"  military  and  political  character  was  attacked  with 
equal  violence,  and  it  was  aveured  that  he  was  totally 
destitute  of  merit,  either  as  a  soldier  or  a  statesman. 
The  calumnies  with  which  he  was  assailed  were  not 
confined  to  his  political  conduct  ;  even  his  qualities  as  a 
man  were  the  subjects  of  detraction.  That  he  had  vio 
lated  the  Constitution  in  negotiating  a  treaty  without  the 


previous  advice  of  "the  Senate,  and  in  embracing  in  that 
treaty  subjects  belonging  exclusively  to  the  Legislature/ 
was  openly  maintained,  for  which  an  impeachment  was 
publicly  suggested  ;  and  that  he  had  drawn  from  the 
Treasury  for  his  private  use  more  than  the  salary  an-i 
nexed  to  his  office,  was  asserted  without  a  'blush.  This 
last  allegation  was  said  to  be  supported  by  extracts  from 
the  Treasury  accounts,  which  had  been  laid  before  the 
Legislature,  and  was  maintained  with  the  most  unblush 
ing  effrontery.  Though  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury 
denied  that  the  appropriation  made  by  the  Legislature 
had  been  exceeded,  the  atrocious  charge  was  still  confi 
dently  reported,  and  the  few  who  could  triumph  in  any 
spot  which  might  tarnish  the  lustre  of  Washington's  fame 
felicitated  themselves  in  the  prospect  of  obtaining  a 
victory  over  the  reputation  of  a  patriot,  to  whose  single 
influence  they  ascribed  the  failure  of  their  political  plans. 
—MarsJuiU's  Life  of  Washington,  Vel.  1,  page  267. '  , 

Do  you  discover  any  likeness  here  ?  Is  there 
in  the  revolting  ugliness  of  these  attempts  to 
blacken  Washington's  name  anything  to  remind 
you  of  what  is  going  on  around'  us  now  ?  Jack 
son  was  brutally  defamed,  and  even  charged  in 
a  public  print  with  the  paternity  of  colored  bas 
tards.  The  Convention  which  nominated  Polk 
hung  but  from  the  balcony  a  full  length  daub  of 
Henry  Clay,  bespattered  with  blood,  holding  a 
pistol  in  one  hand  and  a  pack  of  cards  in  theother. 
These  were  revolting  brutalities  indeed,  but 
there  is  one  marked  difference  between  the  scan 
dals  hurled  at  Washington,  Jackson,  Buchanan,' 
Lincoln  and  others,  and  those  now  flung  at  Grant. 
The  public  measures,  the  political  policy  of 
these  other  Presidents,  was  in  each  case  opposed 
and  criticised,  and  the  sting  of  personal  calumny 
was  used  as  a  spur  to  the  main  contest.  Now, 
personal  abuse  is  the  Alpha  and  Omega  on  one 
side.  John  Quincy  Adams  was  besmeared  with 
rancorous  aspersion  on  account  of  his  appoint 
ments  to  office,  as  his  father  had  been  for  appoint 
ing  relatives  to  office,  but  the  issue  at  the  same 
time  was  always  made  upon  grave  political  ques 
tions. 

What  political  policy  of  Grant  or  his  Admin 
istration  does  the  opposition  assail  ?     What  part 
of  the  present  policy  do  they  propose  to  reverse 
or  alter  ?     What  part  dare  they  avow  or  admit 
they  mean  to  change  ?     Lay  your  finger  on  it  if 
you   can.     Hard  words   you   can  find,  vague, 
cloudy,  sweeping  denunciations ;  but  take  up, 
one  by  one,  the  important  positions  and  meas 
ures  of  the  Administration,  and  except  the  San 
Domingo  Treaty,  if  that  be  an  exception,  where 
is  the  specific  thing  upon  which  issue  is  made? 
Let  me  state  the  case  in  another  form.     Sup 
pose  all  the  slurs  and  flings  and  vile  gossip 
against  Grant  are  true— suppose  you  admit  the 
whole  of  them — what  do  they  signify  ?  Suppose 
he  has  appointed   a  dozen  relatives   to  office; 
suppose  he  has  failed  to  appreciate  the  claims  of 
certain  politicians  ;   suppose  presents  had  been 
given  him  after  he  was  President  j  suppose  the 
idea  of  making  A.  T.  Stewart  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  was  as  foolish  as  every  reformer  says  it 
was  now ;  suppose  there  was  no  express   law 
authorizing  two  young  military  friends  to  write 
in  his  office  and  carry  his  messages.     Put  it  to 
gether,  and  what  of  it  ? 

If  you  want  a  man  to  pilot  a  ship,  or  lead  an 
army,  or  try  a  cause,  or  build  a  house,  or  set  a 
broken  arm,  or  run  a  locomotive,  what  do  you 
care  so  long  as  he  does  his  work  well,  whether  he 
is  too  fond  of  his  relations,  or  doesn't  like  certain 
politicians,  or  has  subjected  himself  to  envious 


10 


The  President  and  His  Slanderers. 


sneers  by  having  presents  given  to  him?  All 
these  things  are  aside  from  the  purpose.  "They 
are  tithing,  mint,  anise  and  cummin."  Has  he 
made  a  good  President  ?  That  is  the  question. 

SAN    DOMINGO. 

Let  us  examine  the  evidence  ;  and,  first  of  all, 
let  us  take  up  the  charges  and  evidence  against 
him.  The  San  Domingo  treaty,  unlike  going 
to  Long  Branch,  or  smoking  a  cigar,  or  riding 
in  a  palace-car,  was  a  matter  of  public  business, 
and  is,  therefore,  a  topic  not  despicable  or  un 
worthy.  His  guilt  and  his  innocence  in  this 
respect  can  all  be  briefly  stated. 

The  Monroe  doctrine  is  one  of  the  traditions 
of  the  country,  and  of  both  political  partte:,. 
The  Monroe  doctrine  means  opposition  to  ac 
quisitions  on  this  continent  by  European  Powers. 
When  President  Grant  came  in  no  such  question 
was  pending,  but  such  a  question  soon  arose. 
An .  agent  from  the  Dominican  Republic  pre 
sented  himself  to  the  President,  saying  that  the 
people  of  Dominica,  few  in  numbers,  but  rich 
in  one  of  the  most  fertile  isles  of  any  sea,  lying 
close  to  our  shores,  waited  to  come  under  the 
American  flag  ;  and,  that  failing  to  do  so,  they 
would  look  to  a  European  alliance.  The  Pres 
ident  made  no  reply,  and  afterward  a  second 
envoy  appeared  repeating  these  statements,  with 
glowing  accounts  of  the  fertility  and  resources 
of  the  Island  of  San  Domingo. 

Gen.  McClellan,  Admiral  Porter,  Commis 
sioner  Hogan,  and  others,  had  previously  ex 
amined  and  reported  upon  the  island,  and  had 
strongly  stated  its  advantages  as  a  coaling  sta 
tion,  a  naval  station,  a  military  key  to  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico,  and  as  an  area  prolific  in  coffee, 
sugar-cane,  rice,  dye-stuffs,  mahogany,  and  other 
valuable  woods,  and  in  other  products  of  the 
tropics,  besides  iron,  copper,  gold  and  salt. 

With  this  information  before  him,  the  Presi 
dent  could  not  turn  a  deaf  ear  and  a  closed  eye 
to  so  grave  a  matter.  He  caused  two'  or  three 
discreet  persons  to  go,  unexpected  and  unob 
served,  to  San  Domingo,  learn  all  they  could, 
and  make  report.  This  being  done,  the  Presi 
dent  was  convinced  that  the  matter  should  be 
entertained,  put  in  the  form  of  a  treaty,  and 
submitted  to  the  judgment  of  the  Senate  and 
the  country. 

THE    PRESIDENT    CALLS   ON     MR.    SUMNER — A 
QUESTION    OF    VERACITY. 

A  treaty  was  proposed  and  reduced  to  writ 
ing,  and  the  President,  with  none  of  the  "  pre- 
tention  "  which  Mr.  Surnner imagines,  paid  Mr. 
Sumner  the  deference  of  going  to  his  house,  in 
place  of  sending  for  him  to  confer  with  him  as 
Chairman  of  the  Committee  of  Foreign  Rela 
tions,  and  to  ascertain  whether  he  favored  the 
treaty,  and  would  support  it.  The  interview 
took  place  in  the  presence  of  two  witnesses, 
Gen.  Babcock  and  Col.  John  W.  Forney. 

These  two  witnesses,  in  addition  to  the  Pres 
ident,  affirm  that  Mr.  Sumner  distinctly  de 
clared  himself  in  favoi  of  the  treaty,  and  stated 
that  he  should  support  it. 

Col.  Forney  testifies  as  follows  : 

I  was  present  at  Mr.  Sumner's  residence  when  Presi 
dent  Grant  called  and  explained  the  Dominican  treaty 


to  the  Senator,  and,  although  I  cannot  recall  the  exact 
words  of  the  Jatter,  /  understood  him  to  say  that  he 
•would  most  cheerfully  support  the  treaty.  At  the  Pres 
ident's  request,  I  remained  to  hear  his  explanation,  and 
am  free  to  add,  that  such  is  my  deep  regard  for  Mr. 
Sumner,  that  his  endorsement  of  Hie  treaty  ivent  very 
far  to  stimulate  me-  in  giving  it  my  own  support,  I 
have  already  said  this  much  to  Mr.  Sumner,  who,  how 
ever,  claims  that  other  information  since  obtained  has, 
\haped  his  present  action. 

(Signed)  J.  W.  FORNEY. 

This  statement  is  true,  or  it  is  wilfully  false  ; 
because  although  Forney  might  have  misunder 
stood  Mr.  Sumner  at  the  time,  he  cannot  Le  mis 
taken  in  the  fact  that  Mr.  Sumner  afterward 
admitted  that  he  had  changed  his  mind.  Gen. 
Babcock  certifies  in  writing  that  afler  the  inter 
view  with  the  President,  he  and  Mr.  Sumner 
read  and  examined  the  treaty  carefully  together; 
and  that  at  the  close  of  the  interview,  Mr.  Sum 
ner  said,  "  That  he  could  not  think  of  doing 
otherwise  than  supporting'  the  Administration  in 
the  matter"  ;  and  further,  "that  there  was  no  ob 
jection  to  the  instrument  as  a  whole." 

Yet  Mr.  Sumner,  having  meanwhile  taken 
offense  because  his  views  and  wishes  in  other 
matters  were  not  deferred  to,  became  incensed 
at  the  President  and  Mr.  Fish,  denounced  them, 
and  among  other  things  the  San  Domingo 
treaty,  and  raising  an  issue  of  veracity  with 
three  witnesses,  denied  that  he  ever  intimated 
that  he  Would  give  the  treaty  his  support. 

His  version  of  the  interview  with  the  President 
is,  that  the  President  came  to  his  house  and  was 
proceeding  to  unfold  the  San  Domingo  matter, 
when  he  (Sumner)  broke  in  with  the  subject  of 
an  appointment  in  which  he  was  interested ;  and 
that  when  the  President  returned  to  the  treaty, 
he  (Sumner)  evaded  the  point  altogether  by  a 
studied  ambiguity.  Here  are  Mr.  Sumner's 
words, delivered  to  the  Senate  :  "lie  (the  Presi 
dent)  proceeded  with  an  explanation  which  I 
very  soon  interrupted,  saying,  '  by  the  way,  Mr. 
President,  it  is  very  hard  to  turn  out  Gov.  Ash 
ley  ;  I  have  just  received  a  letter  from  the  Gov 
ernor,  and  I  hope  I  shall  not  take  too  great  a 
liberty,  Mr.  President,  if  I  read  it.  I  find  it 
excellent  and  eloquent,  and  written  with  a  feel 
ing  which  interests  me  much.7  I  commenced 
the  letter  and  read  two  pages  or  more,  when  I 
thought  the  President  was  uneasy,  and  I  felt 
that  I  was  taking  too  great  a  liberty  with  him  in 
my  own  house,  but  I  was  irresistibly  impelled  by 
loyalty  to  an  absent  friend,  while  I  was  glad  of 
this  opportunity  of  diverting  attention  from  the 
treaty.  As  conversation  about  Gov.  Ashley 
subsided,  the  President  returned  to  the  treaty, 
leaving  on  my  mind  no  very  strong  idea  of  what 
they  proposed,  and  nothing  with  regard  to  the 
character  of  the  negotiations.  My  reply  was 
precise.  The  language  is  fixed  absolutely  in  my 
memory : 

"  '  Mr.  President,'  I  said,  '  I  am  an  Administration 
man,  and  whatever  you  do,  will  always  find  in  me  the 
most  careful  and  candid  consideration.'  .  .  . 
My  language,  I  repeat,  was  precise,  well  considered,  and 
chosen  in  advance  :  '  I  am  an  Administration  man,  and 
whatever  you  do  will  always  find  in  me  the  most  careful 
and  candid  consideration.' " 

Mr.  Sumner  did  not  deny  that  the  President 
acted  upon  the  belief  that  he  approved  the  treaty, 
nor  did  he  deny  that  he  left  the  President  so  to 
act,  without  ever  informing  him  that  he  had 


Senator  ConkUntfs  Great  Speech  at  New   York. 


11 


changed  his  mind,  or  been  misunderstood.  Yet 
Mr.  Sumner  in  the  Senate  assailed  the  President 
personally  and  bitterly  ;  and  in  a  published  in 
terview  in  Chicago  with  Major  Chamberlain,  a 
man  of  character  and  veracity,  who  had  been  a 
Union  officer,  and  was  then  connected  with  the 
Press,  Mr.  Sumner  charged  the  President  with 
venality  and  jobbery  in  the  San  Domingo  Treaty. 

In  consequence  of  these  and  other  like  occur 
rences,  it  was  proposed  to  send  three  Commis 
sioners  to  San  Domingo,  at  no  cost  beyond  their 
expenses,  to  investigate  and  clear  up  the  whole 
matter,  and  to  ascertain  whether,  as  Mr.  Sum 
ner  had  charged,  lots  in  San  Domingo  had  been 
staked  off  and  marked  with  the  names  of  the 
President  and  others. 

The  inquiry  seemed  fair  to  most  of  those  who 
opposed  and  to  those  who  favored  the  treaty, 
but  Mr.  Sumner  resisted  the  inquiry  inch  by 
inch,  and  after  a  majority  of  the  Foreign  Rela 
tions  Committee  had  joined  him  in  denouncing 
it,  he  insisted  that  it  should  be  referred  to  that 
Committee. 

The  same  familiar  parliamentary  maxim 
about  putting  a  "  child  to  nurse  with  those  who 
care  not  for  it,"  upon  which  he  rung  the  changes 
so  often  in  the  French  Arms  affair,  was  quoted 
to  him  in  vain.  When  the  sale  of  arms  was  to 
be  inquired  into,  Mr.  Sumner  slandered  the 
Senate  for  appointing  a  committee  all  in  favor 
of  investigating,  because  the  committee  was  not 
biased  in  favor  of  convicting  somebody,  but  the 
San  Domingo  inquiry  he  insisted  should  go  to 
a  committee  of  which  a  majority  had  declared 
in  advance  against  any  inquiry  at  all. 

At  the  end  of  a  protracted  and  stubborn  con 
test,  Congress  authorized  a  Commission  to  be 
sent ;  not,  however,  till  Mr.  Sumner  had  de 
nounced  the  President  for  not  taking  it  upon 
himself,  of  his  own  authority,  to  send  a  Com 
mission  without  asking  permission  of  Congress. 
Now  we  hear  from  Mr.  Sumner,  not  that  the 
President  shrinks  from  his  prerogatives,  but 
that  he  arrogantly  oversteps  them. 

Mr.  Wade,  Dr.  Howe  of  Boston,  and  Pres 
ident  Andrew  D.  WThite  were  selected  as  Com 
missioners.  They  visited  San  Domingo,  and 
made  a  report  which  few  qtthe  American  peo 
ple  have  read,  but  which  win  be  read  when  the 
din  and  passion  of  to-day  are  forgotten.  The 
report  explodes  utterly  every  calumnious  pre 
tense,  and  presents  a  statement  which  leaves  no 
room  to  doubt  the  duty  of  the  President  to  con 
sider  as  he  did  the  acquisition  of  San  Domingo, 
and  to  urge  it  upon  the  attention  of  the  Senate 
and  the  country. 

HOW    THE     PRESIDENT    SHAMED      HIS     AC 
CUSERS. 

In  transmitting  this  report  to  Congress  the 
President  did  his  last  act  in  the  matter.  With 
ihe  report  he  sent  a  Message,  to  which  a  Minis 
ter  from  one  of  the  first  Powers  of  the  earth  told 
me  he  called  the  attention  of  his  Government, 
as  one  of  the  most  remarkable  State  papers  of 
which  he  had  knowledge.  In  that  Message 
stand  these  words  : 

"  The  mere  rejection  by  the  Senate  of  a  treaty  nego 
tiated  by  the  President,  only  indicates  a  difference  of 
opinion  between  two  co-ordinate  departments  of  the  Gov 
ernment,  without  touching  the  character  or  wounding 


the  pride  of  either.  Bat  when  such  rejection  takes  place 
simultaneously  with  the  charges,  openly  made,  of  cor 
ruption  on  the  part  of  the  President,  or  those  employed 
by  him,  the  case  is  different.  In  such  case  the  honor  of 
the  nation  demands  investigation.'  This  has  been  accom 
plished  by  the  report  of  the  Commissioners  herewith 
transmitted,  and  which  fully  vindicates  the  purity  of  the 
motives  and  action  of  those  \vho  represented  the  United 
States  in  the  negotiation.  And  now  my  task  is  finished, 
and  with  it  ends  all  personal  solicitude  upon  the  subject. 
"  My  duty  being  done,  yours  begins  ;  and  I  gladly 
hand  over  the  whole  matter  to  the  judgment  of  the 
American  people,  and  of  their  Representatives  in  Con 
gress  assembled.  The  facts  will  now  be  spread^before 
the  country,  and  a  decision  rendered  by  that  tribunal 
•whose  convictions  so  seldom  err,  and  against 
whose  will  I  have  no  policy  to  enforce.  My  opinion  re 
mains  unchanged  ;  indeed,  it  is  confirmed  by  the  report 
that  the  interests  of  our  country  and  San  Domingo  alike 
invite  the  annexation  of  that  Republic.  In  view  of  the 
difference  of  opinion  upon  this  subject,  I  suggest  that  no 
action  be  taken  at  the  present  session  beyond  the  print 
ing  and  general  dissemination  of  the  report.  Before  the 
next  session  of  Congress  the  people  will  have  considered 
the  subject,  and  formed  an  intelligent  opinion  concerning 
it,  to  which  opinion,  deliberately  made  up,  it  will  be  the 
duty  of  every  department  of  the  Government  to  give  heed, 
and  no  one  will  more  cheerfully  conform  to  it  than 
myself." 

This  was  the  utterance  last  year  of  the  man 
whom  we  are  told  is  swollen  with  ' '  pretension  " 
and  "ungovernable  personality." 

Among  the  glaring  absurdities  heaped  upon 
the  San  Domingo  matter  is  the  allegation  that 
the  war  was  made  upon  the  Republic  of  Hayti. 
The  foundation  for  this  is  that  a  vessel  or  two 
cruised  in  that  part  of  the  ocean  during  the  ne 
gotiations.  Not  a  gun  was  fired,  nor  a  pocket- 
pistol,  nor  a  percussion  cap,  and  the  only  war 
like  demonstration  ever  heard  of  was  that  a  sea- 
captain  sent  up  a  sky-rocket  from  the  deck  of 
his  vessel.  The  purpose  of  this  sky-rocket,  or 
where  the  stick  came  down,  has  never  been 
ascertained. 

This,  in  brief,  is  the  story  of  the  San  Domin 
go  affair.  I  do  not  refer  to  it  to  champion  the 
treaty  or  argue  its  merits  ;  that  is  another  mat 
ter.  My  purpose  is  to  show  you  that  the  part 
acted  by  the  President  was  the  part  of  an  hon 
est,  modest  man,  walking  in  the  path  of  the 
Constitution  and  of  his  predecessors. 

Previous  Administrations  had  eagerly  sought 
a  foothold  in  the  West  Indies.  A  naval  station 
and  a  harbor  there  have  long  been  deemed  an 
urgent  necessity.  Andrew  Johnson  and  Gov. 
Seward  made  a  treaty  agreeing  to  pay  Denmark 
seven  millions  and  a  half  in  gold  for  the  Island 
of  St.  Thomas.  The  principal  production  of 
St.  Thomas  is  earthquakes,  and  the  Senate  re 
fused  to  buy  earthquakes  at  the  price  agreed 
upon  ;  but  it  is  not  known  that  Mr.  Sumner  or 
anybody  else  denounced  the  making  of  the 
treaty. 

Andrew  Johnson  and  Gov.  Seward  made  a 
treaty  with  Russia,  agreeing  to  pay  seven  mil 
lions  and  a  quarter  for  Alaska,  in  gold.  No 
body  was  ever  sent  to  examine  Alaska.  When 
the  treaty  was  made  we  had  never  looked  upon 
a  man  who  had  set  foot  upon  it ;  we  had  heard 
of  its  icebergs  and  floods,  and  it  seemed  a  white 
elephant ;  but  the  Senate  agreed  to  the  treaty. 
The  Chainnan  of  Foreign  Relations  changed 
his  mind  on  that  treaty  also.  He  started  against 
it,  but,  touched  by  the  master  hand  of  the  sage 
of  Auburn,  he  suddenly  turned  and  made  a 
glowing  speech  in  its  behalf.  The  speech, 


The  President  and  His  Slanderers, 


bound  in  Turkey  morocco,  was  sent  to  the 
crowned  heads  of  Europe,  and  its  author  sits  in 
a  picture,  with  the  Russian  Minister  and  Secre 
tary  of  State,  consigned  to  immortality  by  the 
pencil  of  Leutze. 

Franklin  Pierce,  with  the  whole  Democracy 
at  his  back,  attempted  to  force  Spain  to  cede 
Cuba  to  us.  Pierre  Soule  was  sent  out  as  Min 
ister  to  Spain,  and  on  his  way  stopped  in  the 
city  of  New  York.  There  he  was  serenaded 
by  the  Order  of  the  Lone  Star,  a  band  of  avow 
ed  Cuban  filibusters,  and,  addressing  the  crowd 
in  the  street,  he  declared  that  Cuba  should  be 
"torn  from  the  old  Spanish  Wolf." 

In  the  face  of  this  outrage  and  affront  tp  a 
friendly  power,  President  Pierce  suffered  Soule 
to  sail  for  Spain  ;  he  proceeded  to  Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle,  and  there  Soule,  James  Buchanan,  John 
Y.  Mason  and  August  Belmont,  all  American 
Ministers  to  foreign  countries,  sat  down  and 
signed  the  Ostend  Manifesto.  This  paper, 
caught  up  and  endorsed  by  the  whole  Demo 
cratic  party,  argued  the  imperative  necessity  for 
self-defense  of  a  foothold  in  the  West  Indies, 
and,  upon  the  plea  of  necessity,  stated  without 
a  blush  the  Rob- Roy  doctrine  that  might  makes 
right,  and  avowed  that  if  Spain  would  not  sell 
Cuba  it  should  be  taken  by  force. 

After  all  these  things,  the  same  men  who 
justified  them  denounce  as  monstrous  the  idea 
of  paying  one  million  and  a  half  for  a  territory 
next  our  own  shores,  with  one  of  the  finest  har 
bors  in  the  world,  with  an  area  as  large  as 
Conpecticut,  Vermont  and  Massachusetts,  with 
a  soil  and  climate  better  than  Cuba,  and 
with  only  a  handful  of  people.  We  pay  Cuba 
$58,000,000  a  year  for  products  of  slave  labor. 
We  buy  nearly  all  the  slave-raised  coffee  of  Bra 
zil  ;  and  here  is  an  island  on  which  would  grow 
all  that  Cuba  and  Brazil  send  here  ;  and  a  Presi 
dent  is  denounced  as  knave  and  fool  for  submit 
ting  to  the  people  its  purchase  for  one  and  a 
half  million  dollars  ! 

The  scheme  may  be  unwise  ;  upon  that  ques 
tion  I  wait  for  further  light  and  better  judgment; 
but  the  public  sense  will  never  run  so  mad  as 
to  crucify  a  public  servant  for  submitting  it  to 
the  wisdom  of  the  people. 

"REMOVAL"  OF  MR.  SUMNER. 

It  may  not  be  amiss  here  to  allude  to  the  effort 
to  rouse  indignation  over  the  so-called  "removal" 
of  Mr.  Sumner  from  the  Committee  of  Foreign 
Relations.  Mr.  Sumner  was  never  "removed" 
at  all.  All  Senate  committees  die  at  the  end 
of  each  session.  All  Senate  committees  are 
created  anew  at  the  beginning  of  each  session. 
Mr.  Sumner  had  been  selected  repeatedly  for 
the  Chairmanship  of  the  Committee  referred  to, 
and  the  question  was  always,  looking  over  the 
whole  Senate,  who  would  be  the  most  useful, 
and,  all  things  considered,  the  best  man  for  the 
place.  At  the  time  in  question,  and  for  rea 
sons  easily  stated,  the  Senate  thought  it  would 
not  be  wise  to  select  Mr.  Sumner  again  for  that 
Committee,  and  he  was  selected  for  another. 
This  was  not  done  because  Mr.  Sumner  op 
posed  San  Domingo,  nor  because  he  changed 
sides  upon  that  question,  nor  because  the  Presi 
dent  or  the  Secretary  of  State  wanted,  or  did 


not  want,  Mr.  Sumner  on  this  committee  or  on 
that.  The  reasons  were  wholly  different. 
They  were  reasons  of  the  Senate  alone,  and 
reasons  which  have  governed  the  formation  of 
parliamentaiy  committees  everywhere  since  such 
committees  were  known.  The  Committee  on 
Foreign  Affairs,  in  either  House  of  Congress, 
ought  not  only,  like  other  committees,  to  re 
present  the  majority  of  the  body,  but,  for  pe-. 
culiar  reasons,  it  must  be  composed  of  men  who 
can  and  will  consult  freely  with  the  President, 
the  Secretary  of  State,  and  their  assistants. 
This  is  especially  true  of  the  Chairman,  he  be 
ing  the  organ  of  the  Committee. 

Mr.  Sumner  not  only  wielded  his  position 
as  Chairman  in  opposition  to  the  majority  of 
the  Senate  upon  several  important  questions, 
and  boasted  in  the  Senate  that  the  Committee 
could  not  be  changed,  but  his  conduct  and  lan 
guage  in  public  and  in  private  had  rendered  it 
impossible  for  him  to  hold  communication  with 
those  whom  it  was  indispensable  to  confer  with, 
and  impossible  for  them  to  confer  with  him. 

Men  cannot  do  business  conveniently  with 
those  whom  they  denounce  and  insult  continu 
ally,  nor  with  those  toward  whom  they  assume 
offensive  superiority  ;  and  the  time  came,  with 
Mr.  Sumner,  as  Chairman,  when  the  Senate 
was  left  in  ignorance,  and  business  delayed  for 
weeks,  for  lack  of  information  from  the  State 
Department,  merely  because  Mr.  Sumner  did 
not  hold  communication  with  it.  The  simple, 
indeed  the  only,  cure  for  all  this,  was  to  select 
another  Chairman.  This  was  done,  and  nothing 
more  ;  and  it  turned  out  that  treaties,  six  or 
seven  in  number,  having  long  lain  buried  in  the 
Committee,  after  the  change  of  Chairman  were 
at  once  brought  up  and  ratified. 

Yet  this  action  of  the  Senate  in  managing  and 
expediting  its  own  business,  has  been  made  a 
grave  matter  for  public  consideration,  and  thrust 
at  the  President,  who  had  no  more  to  do  with 
it  than  the  Senate  has  to  do  with  deciding 
how  many  vegetables  the  President  has  on  his 
table. 

I  leave  this  matter  after  asking  one  question. 
Is  there  one  man  on  this  continent,  except  Mr. 
Sumner,  who  couM  with  propriety  have  clung 
to  a  position  after  liis  associates  who  conferred 
it  were  unwilling  he  should  retain  it ;  is  there 
one  other  man  who  would  have  supposed  that 
his  being  on  this  committee  or  on  that,  would 
"jar  the  harmony  of  the  universe  "  ? 

"NEPOTISM." 

Let  me  go  on  with  the  charges  against  the 
President.  Few  of  them  figure  more  largely 
than  appointing  relatives  to  offic-e.  Mr.  Sumner 
has  staggered  the  nation  by  the  weight  of  the 
dictionaries,  encyclopedias,  and  other  big  books 
which  he  has  dumped  upon  us,  to  show  what 
"nepotism  "  is.  He  finds  it  charged  that  Popes 
had  Nephews,  and  lavished  upon  them  the 
moneys  of  the  church  ;  and  he  thinks  that  where 
a  public  office  is  to  be  filled,  and  a  good  man  is 
appointed  at  the  same  pay  any  other  man  would 
receive,  a  case  has  occurred  like  that  of  the  Popes, 
provided  the  man  who  makes  the  appointment, 
and  the  man  who  gets  it,  are  related  to  each  other. 
This,  if  not  a  useful,  is  a  wonderful  discovery. 


Senator  Conkling^s  Great  Speech  at  New    York. 


U 


From  the  morning  of  time,  common  sense  has 
distinguished  between  creating  a  useless  and  lu 
crative  sinecure  and  bestowing  it  on  a  relative, 
and  selecting  a  relative  to  do  a  service  required 
to  be  done.  When  Hannibal  and  Frederick  the 
Great  and  Napoleon  and  Emperor  William  put 
a  brother  or  a  son  at  the  head  of  an  army  with 
rank  and  titles,  or  even  placed  him  on  a  throne, 
the  world  never  thought  it  was  like  a  sinecure 
for  a  Papal  nephew. 

On  the  contrary,  in  public  and  in  private  busi 
ness,  nothing  has  seemed  more  natural  than  for 
those  intrusted  with  affairs  to  employ  and  asso 
ciate  with  themselves  persons  in  whom  they 
most  confided,  whether  relatives  or  not.  In  all 
such  cases,  if  the  person  be  fit,  little  harm  can 
be  done ;  but  if  he  is  unfit,  a  great  wrong  is  done 
whether  he  be  a  relative  or  not.  If  the  appoint 
ment  of  relatives  be  a  crime,  a  great  many  men, 
including  the  busiest  and  most  blatant  ' '  Liber 
als,"  must  be  great  criminals.  Andrew  Johnson, 
his  Cabinet  and  chief  officers,  must  have  been 
huge  offenders,  for  reasons  which  no  one  thought 
of  at  the  time,  though  everybody  knew  of  them. 

President  Johnson's  son  was  his  chief  Private 
Secretary.  Gov.  Seward's  son  was  Assistant 
Secretary  of  State.  Edwin  M.  Stanton's  son 
was  a  Clerk  in  the  War  Department.  Gideon 
Welles's  son  was  Chief  Clerk  of  the  Navy  De 
partment  ;  and  when  Gideon  Welles  employed  a 
relative  at  a  great  remuneration  to  buy  ships, 
the  scandal  was  not  that  he  paid  just  sums  to  a 
relative,  but  that  he  paid  such  sums  at  all. 
Reverdy  Johnson,  Minister  to  England,  made 
his  son  Assistant  Secretary  of  Legation.  John 
A.  Dix,  Minister  to  France,  did  the  same  thing 
with  his  son.  All  this  was  under  Andrew  John 
son,  but  when  a  drag  net  of  criticism  and  im 
peachment  was  cast  over  him  these  things  were 
not  caught  up. 

"LIBERAL"  RELATIVES. 

The  rueful  "  Reformers  "  themselves  will  not 
bear  examination  on  this  point.  Mr.  Schurz 
pressed  his  brother-in-law  upon  the  President, 
and  obtained  for  him  a  lucrative  office,  and 
when  Mr.  Trumbull  caused  his  removal  up 
on  statements  impeaching  his  fitness,  Mr. 
Schurz  raged  against  the  President  for  remov 
ing  his  brother-in-law.  Mr.  Trumbull  seems 
to  have  procured  appointments  for  his  brother- 
in-law,  his  sons,  and  his  nephews,  and  he  broke, 
it  his  said,  with  the  President  because  he  re 
fused  to  appoint  Mr.  Trumbull's  son  to  an  office. 
That  shrill  and  frisky  "  Reformer,"  Mr.  Tipton, 
although  not  collossal  himself,  would  need  a 
hay-scales  to  be  weighed  along  with  all  his  re 
latives  he  has  helped  to  get  office.  Three 
brothers-in-law,  a  nephew,  and  a  son,  in  office, 
with  other  things  for  other  relatives,  did  not 
satisfy  his  "liberal"  inclinations;  but  he  vig 
orously  plied  the  President  and  the  Secretary  of 
State  to  give  a  valuable  consulship  to  another 
son,  and  after  they  declined  he  frequently  avow 
ed,  once  pipingly  to  the  President  himself,  that 
the  refusal  was  the  cause  of  his  opposition. 

Mr.  Fenton  saw  no  objection  to  giving  his 
adopted  son  his  influence  for  an  office,  nor  to 
obtaining  it  from  Tammany  Hall,  and  keeping 
it  through  all  the  exposures  of  Tweed  and  the 


rest,  although  no  service  was  attached  to  it  equiv 
alent  to  the  pay. 

Mr.  Sumner,  with  a  brother-in-law  in  offic 
under  Andrew  Johnson,  was  inflamed  by  his  re 
moval,  and  did  not  hesitate  to  make  known  hi 
displeasure. 

Even  Mr.  Greeley  did  not  scruple  to  counte 
nance  his  brother-in-law  in  obtaining  the  mos 
lucrative  collectorship  of  internal  revenue  in  th< 
United  States.  Nor  has  he  hesitated  to  urge  ap 
pointments  clearly  unfit,  on  the  ground  of  th< 
intimate  terms  between  himself  and  those  h< 
urged. 

DEMOCRATIC    RELATIVES— GOV.    HOFFMAN. 

Old-line  Democrats  are  as  weak  as  the  ne\\ 
and  buzzing  converts  in  regard  to  relatives, 
Kentucky  is  the  best  example  of  a  Democratk 
State  Government,  pure  and  simple.  She  ha; 
a  Democratic  Governor,  Treasurer,  Adjutant 
General,  Attorney- General,  Clerk  of  the  Couri 
of  Appeals,  Auditor,  and  keeper  of  the  Peniten 
tiary,  and  of  these,  there  is  not  one  free  from 
appointing  relatives  to  office,  and  the  same  thing 
is  true  in  numerous  instances  of  members  of  th( 
Kentucky  Legislature. 

The  City  of  New  York,  with  its  unmitigated 
Democratic  government,  is  prolific  beyond  meas 
ure  in  similar  things.  The  Governor  of  New 
York,  having  turned  "reformer,"  must  be  con- 
sidered  high  author  ty.  When  Gov.  Hoffman 
was  Mayor,  his  father-in-law,  Henry  Stark 
weather,  was  appointed,  May  I,  1867,  Collectoi 
of  "Assessments."  In  form,  the  appointmenl 
was  made  by  Street  Commissioner  McLean,  bul 
McLean  was  appointed  by  Hoffman.  Tweed 
succeeded  McLean,  but  Starkweather  was  con 
tinued  by  Tweed,  and  never  relinquished  his 
place  till  the  Spring  of  1872.  Up  to  July,  1871, 
being  four  years  and  two  months,  Stark weathet 
received  in  this  office  $560,824.59,  as  appeared 
on  the  books  of  the  office,  Feb.  27,  1872.  This 
great  sum  was  received  under  the  influence  ol 
Hoffman  by  his  father-in-law,  and  Hoffman's 
wife  is  his  father-in-law's  only  child.  This 
makes  the  arrangement  a  closer  and  snuggei 
thing  than  can  be  found  even  in  Sumner's  history 
of  the  Popes. 

How  far  such  a  sum  could  fitly  be  taken  by 
Starkweather,  appears  from  a  report  made  on 
the  4th  of  March,  1872,  to  the  Board  of  Assist 
ant  Alderman,  by  its  Committee  of  Finance  ; 
the  report  is  signed  by  Charles  P.  Hartt  and 
Charles  C.  Pinckney,  and  relates  to  the  Collec 
tor  of  Assessments  and  his  fees.  I  read  from 
the  report  these  words : 

Your  Committee  find  that  the  entire  duties  of  the  Bu 
reau  are  performed  by  the  Collector  of  Assessments  and 
four  or  five  employees  :  that  these  employees  receive 
compensation  out  of  the  fees  of  the  office  to  the  extent 
of  about  $11,000  per  annum,  and  that  the  remainder  of 
said  fees  is  divided  between  the  Collector  and  such  Dep 
uty  Collectors  as  are  from  time  to  time  appointed  ;  these 
Deputy  Collectors,  however,  perform  no  work,  and  ren 
der  no  assistance  whatever  to  the  Collector  in  tkedutits 
of  the  Bureau. 

Again  the  report  says  : 

If  the  Collector  can,  with  credit  to  himself,  manage 
the  affairs  of  his  bureau  by  the  annual  expenditure  for 
clerk  hire  of  $11,000,  it  must  be  evident  that  there  can 
exist  no  necessity  whatever  for  its  maintenance  under  its 
present  management,  at  an  annual  cost  of  more  than 


14 


Tfie  President  and  His  Slanderers. 


$130,000.     Its  office  accommodation,  books,   stationery, 
safes,  furniture,  etc. ,  etc. ,  are  all  borne  by  the  city. 

Among  the  worthy  and  needy  provided  for 
by  Mr.  Starkweather,  was  Wm.  M.  Tweed, 
who  received  for  nothing  $101,978. 17. 

Did  you  ever  hear  this  reeking  and  festering 
job  talked  about  by  the  men  or  the  papers  now 
shrieking  about  "nepotism?"  While  Governor 
Hoffman  was  Mayor  his  Chief  Clerk  was  his 
brother-in-law,  who  at  the  same  time  was  also 
clerk  of  the  Street  Cleaning  Commission  of  which 
Hoffman  was  Chairman,  thus  holding  two  offices 
under  his  brother-in-law,  and  at  the  same  time 
another  relative  of  the  Governor's  held  office  at 
his  hands. 

RELATIVES  OF  THE   PRESIDENT. 

But  if  Gen.  Grant  has  done  wrong,  the  crime 
of  others  can  not  help  him.  Let  us  look  into 
his  case.  You  might  suppose  from  the  noise, 
that  he  had  used  a  relative  as  a  peg  for  every 
hole  in  the  country,  and  that  he  had  put  round 
pegs  in  square  holes,  and  square  pegs  in  round 
holes,  everywhere.  It  has  been  said  that  he  has 
appointed  fifty  relatives,  forty  relatives,  thirty 
relatives,  and  Mr.  Sumner  estimates  thirteen 
relatives,  to  office.  None  of  these  statements 
are  true.  Since  President  Grant  came  in,  but 
nine  persons  in  all,  connected  in  the  remotest 
degree  with  him  or  with  his  wife,  have  held  po 
litical  office  under  the  United  States. 

I  have  a  list  of  them,  and  do  not  speak  with 
out  information.  Nine  is  the  total  number  in 
political  office.  This  does  not  include  a  son  of 
the  President  sent  as  a  pupil  to  West  Point  long 
before  his  father  became  President ;  nor  does  it 
include  his  brother-in-law,  Dent,  who  has  long 
held  a  commission  in  the  army  by  the  same  ten 
ure  under  which  Sherman  and  Sheridan,  and 
every  other  officer  of  the  army  holds  his  place, 
and  which  the  President  has  no  more  power  to 
give  or  take  away  than  the  man  in  the  moon. 

Of  the  nine  relatives  or  connections  in  office 
two  were  appointed  by  Andrew  Johnson,  viz  : 
the  President's  father,  Postmaster  at  Covington, 
Ky.,  and  his  brother-in-law,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Cra 
mer,  Consul  at  Leipsic.  Mr.  Cramer  was  trans 
ferred  from  Leipsic  to  Denmark  by  President 
Grant,  on  the  recommendation  of  Bishop  Simp 
son,  Bishop  Jayne,  and  many  other  well-known 
persons,  friends  of  Mr.  Cramer.  Being  the 
brother-in-law  of  the  President,  he  of  course  be 
came  a  mark  for  "Liberal"  abuse,  and  was 
charged  with  drinking  beer  and  being  refused 
membership  of  a  social  club. 

But  now  comes  the  Cincinnati  Methodist  Con 
ference,  about  as  respectable  a  body  as  has  met 
in  Cincinnati  lately,  and  certifies,  after  full  in 
vestigation,  the  utter  falsity  of  the  charges. 
Their  report  is  fortified  by  letters  from  Copenha 
gen,  and  by  statements  of  the  official  journal  and 
Other  newspapers  there,  indignantly  repelling  the 
aspersions  cast  at  Mr.  Cramer,  and  pronouncing 
him  a  blameless  officer  and  man. 

Deducting  Jesse  R.  Grant  and  M.  J.  Cramer, 
appointed  by  Johnson,  seven  instances  of  rela 
tives  in  political  office  remain,  and  of  those  but 
two  were  in  truth  and  in  fact  appointed  by  the 
President,  as  1  will  show  you. 

Orlando  H.  Ross,  a  cousin  of  the  President, 


holds  a  clerkship  under  the  Third  Auditor  of  the 
Treasury.  He  was  a  soldier  in  the  war,  and 
Gen.  Logan,  as  he  stated  in  the  Senate,  procur 
ed  his  appointment  at  the  Treasury  Department 
without  the  knowledge  of  the  President,  who,  in 
fact,  never  heard  of  it,  until  he  read  it  in  a  news 
paper.  This  leaves  six,  and  of  these  four  hold 
local  offices,  viz  :  Geo.  W.  Dent,  Appraiser  at 
San  Francisco ;  James  F.  Casey,  Collector  at 
New  Orleans  ;  one  a  brother  and  the  other  a 
brother-in-law  of  Mrs.  Grant ;  Peter  Casey, 
Postmaster  at  Vicksburg,  Miss.,  a  brother  of  a 
brother-in-law  of  Mrs.  Grant ;  and  George  B, 
Johnson,  Assessor  of  the  Third  District  of  Ohio, 
who  married  a  third  cousin  of  the  President. 
These  men  hold  local  offices,  and  were  selected 
and  put  forward,  as  has  been  universal  in  both 
political  parties  for  fifty  years,  by  the  local  Repre 
sentative. 

When  the  member  of  Congress  from  a  district 
certifies  the  character  of  an  applicant  for  a  post- 
office,  or  any  othei-  office  local  in  his  district, 
and  recommends  his  selection,  the  practice  of 
the  Government  has  always  been  to  rely  and 
act  upon  such  representations,  holding  the  mem 
ber  of  Congress  responsible  to  the  Government 
and  to  his  constituents,  if  he  obtains  unfit  ap 
pointments. 

It  was  in  this  way  that  the  four  persons  just 
named  were  selected,  the  President  having  no 
part  in  the  matter,  if  he  believed  the  applicants 
fit  and  worthy,  except  to  consult  the  wishes  of 
the  people,  made  known  through  their  repre 
sentatives,  or  else  to  overrule  their  wishes,  upon 
the  ground  that  it  might  be  better  for  himself 
not  to  run  the  risk  of  having  the  matter  some 
time  or  other  flung  in  his  face. 

Two  appointments  remain,  and  upon  these 
the  President  did  undoubtedly  exercise  his  own 
choice  and  his  own  judgment. 

The  first  is  Alexander  Sharp,  a  connection 
of  Mrs.  Grant,  who  was  appointed  Marshal  of 
the  District  of  Columbia.  This  officer  is  virtu 
ally  a  member  of  the  President's  household — he 
receives  company  with  the  family,  introduces  vis 
itors,  and  generally  helps  along.  For  these  reas 
ons  some  relative  or  near  friend  of  the  President's 
family  has  always  been  found  in  this  position. 

The  remaining  relative  is  Silas  Hudson,  Min 
ister  to  Guatemala.  He  is  cousin  to  the  Presi 
dent.  Iowa,  the  State  in  which  he  lives,  had 
the  Mission  to  Guatemala  before  President 
Grant  came  in  ;  Fitz  Henry  Warren  held  it, 
and  on  his  retirement  Iowa  claimed  it  still,  and 
presented  Mr.  Hudson,  who  is  described  as  an 
able  and  accomplished  man.  The  President 
might  have  refused  to  appoint  him  without  giv 
ing  just  offense  to  the  Republicans  of  Iowa,  be 
cause  he  might  have  taken  a  man  from  some 
other  State  ;  but  he  did  appoint  him,  and  thus 
he  furnished  the  needy  "Liberals"  with  one 
awful  example. 

APPOINTMENTS    TO   OFFICE  —  NEW  YORK    AP 
POINTMENTS. 

But  the  President's  selections  for  office  gener 
ally  have,  we  are  told,  been  partisan,  personal 
and  ill-judged.  I  believe  the  reverse  of  all  this 
is  true.  He  has  appointed  more  Judges  than 
any  of  his  predecessors  were  called  upon  to  se- 


Senator  ConkUng's  Great  Speech  at  New    York. 


15 


lect,  and  his  selections  are  such  as  to  vindicate 
him  from  the  charge  of  making  personal  prefer 
ence,  or  gratification  of  himself,  the  criterion. 
When  he  came  to  select  our  members  of  the 
Geneva  Board  he  named  Mr.  Adams,  whom  he 
had  never  seen,  and  who  was  neither  his  parti 
san  or  his  friend.  As  counsel  before  that  high 
tribunal,  he  selected  Mr.  Evarts,  who  was  not 
his  partisan,  and  Mr.  Curtis,  and  Mr.  Gushing, 
who  were  political  opponents.  What  Demo 
cratic  President  ever  did  the  like  ?  Other  cases 
might  be  cited  to  show  how  unselfish  and  con 
scientious  he  has  been. 

In  the  State  of  New  York  there  was  no  com 
plaint  about  appointments  as  long  as  particular 
men  were  permitted  to  dictate  them. 

The  hungry  "Reformers"  of  today  fattened 
and  exulted  then.  It  was,  in  their  estimation, 
high  merit  and  statesmanship  for  Senators  and 
others  to  crouch  and  prowl  day  and  night  around 
the  sources  of  power.  No  one  overreached  this 
thriving  business  ;  it  overreached  itself. 

" Patronage"  in  the  State  of  New  York  has 
been  a  prolific  theme  of  misrepresentation.  The 
public  has  been  kept  constantly  advised  of  a 
"quarrel  between  our  Senators";  yet  there  has 
been  no  such  "quarrel."  The  fact  is  of  a  differ 
ent  kind.  It  is  impossible  to  answer  the  clamor 
on  this  subject  without  alluding  to  personal  mat 
ters  which  have  not  heretofore  seemed  to  me 
entitled  to  a  public  hearing;  but  now  friends 
insist  that  a  statement  should  be  made,  and  I 
reluctantly  comply. 

Between  Gov.  Morgan  and  myself,  while  we 
served  together  in  the  Senate,  and  between  both 
and  our  colleagues  in  the  House,  there  was 
always  the  best  accord.  For  some  reason  dis 
cordant  action  dates  from  the  advent  of  Gov. 
Morgan's  successor. 

For  some  time  before  the  inauguration  of 
President  Grant,  as  well  as  afterward,  one  Sena 
tor  from  New  York  visited  the  President  assid 
uously,  and  claimed  to  be  his  special  champion ; 
the  other  Senator  did  neither  of  these  things. 
One  Senator  conspicuously  busied  himself  in  the 
effort  to  repeal  "The  Tenure-of- Office  act," 
which  the  President  was  said  to  wish  to  have 
repealed  ;  the  other  Senator  opposed  the  repeal 
throughout.  One  Senator  appeared  as  the  con 
fidential  representative  of  Mr.  Stewart,  in  regard 
to  his  entering  upon  the  office  of  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  ;  the  other  Senator  opposed  the  whole 
project  of  repealing  or  evading  the  law,  and  so 
told  the  President. 

These  and  other  incidents  paved  the  way  for 
the  impression  that  one  of  these  Senators  was  not 
to  be  regarded  as  a  friend  of  the  Administration. 
The  opportunity  thus  offered  was  seized  with 
avidity,  and  alleged  acts  of  opposition  were  pa 
raded,  harped  upon  and  distorted,  till  the  dis 
trust  of  the  President  and  members  of  his  Cabi 
net  was  aroused.  No  attempt  to  counteract  this 
proceeding  was  made,  but  the  matter  was  left 
for  time  to  set  right.  Meanwhile  the  supposed 
friends  of  the  unpliant  Senator  were  pursued 
with  groundless  allegations,  carried  to  the  ap 
pointing  power  ;  and,  for  a  year,  men  who  then 
claimed  to  be  "the  exponents  of  Radical-Re 
publicanism  in  New  York  "  chuckled  over  the 


well-worn  witticism,  "one  of  our  Senators  is  a 
figure  9  with  the  tail  off." 

During  this  long  and  somewhat  annoying 
manoeuvre,  no  one  ever  made  war  because  of  it, 
in  the  party  or  out  of  the  party — no  one  ever 
raised  a  note  of  discord. 

The  favored  Senator,  for  weeks  after  President 
Grant  came  in,  was  attended  in  Washington  by 
a  pumerous  band  of  friends,  better  known  at 
Albany  than  at  Washington,  who  assumed  to 
speak  for  the  Republican  Party  of  the  State. 
They  were  all  worshippers  and  defenders  of  the 
Administration.  They  infested  the  White  House 
and  the  departments,  and  assisted  in  "distribu 
ting  the  patronage. " 

Under  these  auspices  men  were  expelled  from 
office  in  Congressional  districts  having  no  Re 
publican  Representative  to  protect  them,  for  the 
reason,  always  denied  to  the  President,  that 
they  were  the  friends  of  Gov.  Morgan,  or  of 
the  other  Senator,  or  not  the  friends  of  Gov. 
Fenton. 

Men  believed  to  be  objectionable  to  leading 
Republicans  were  put  in  place,  and  these  pro 
ceedings  were  cited  to  prove  that  to  be  "  recog 
nized,"  Republicans  must  be  of  a  particular 
stripe. 

Among  those  thus  selected  were  several  per 
sons  whose  unfitness  soon  ended  in  disgrace. 
One  instance  of  misconduct  after  another  came 
to  the  ears  of  the  President,  till,  alarmed  at 
such  occurrences,  he  began  to  suspect  the  dis 
cernment  or  the  sincerity  of  those  to  whom  he 
had  listened.  The  result  was  that  the  Presi 
dent  grew  more  wary.  It  soon  became  known 
that  he  had  increased  the  number  of  those  with 
whom  he  had  consulted,  and  had  ceased  to 
make  appointments  upon  the  ipse  dixit  of  any 
individual. 

The  first  symptom  of  an  inclination  to  eman 
cipate  himself  from  the  dictation  which  had  be 
set  him,  caused  alarm  and  offense. 

The  President  was  expostulated  with,  and 
hints  were  given  him  of  formidable  defections  to 
come,  in  the  State  of  New  York.  It  is  even 
said  that  a  Senator  addressed  him  a  letter  al 
luding  to  his  own  aspirations  for  the  Presidency 
in  1872,  and  offering  to  withdraw  and  give  the 
State  of  New  York  to  him,  provided  agreeable 
understandings  could  be  had  in  regard  to  "the 
patronage." 

ATTEMPTS    TO    CARRY    STATE    CONVENTIONS. 

To  impress  and  coerce  the  appointing  power, 
a  herculean  effort  was  made  in  1870  to  carry  the 
State  Convention. 

Tammany  Hall,  with  all  its  pedal  attachments 
and  whippers-in,  came  into  the  field.  Money 
was  lavished,  and  the  State  was  tramped  from 
end  to  end,  to  carry  delegates  who  would  "show 
Grant  where  the  power  is."  The  Convention 
met  at  Saratoga.  The  Senator  who  had  headed 
the  hunt,  and  early  procured  himself  to  be  made 
a  delegate,  was  to  preside  in  the  Convention, 
and  resolutions  were  to  be  adopted,  and  a  State 
Central  Committee  made,  which  would  "bring 
Grant  to  his  milk." 

The  patriotism  and  good  sense  of  the  Conven 
tion  frowned  down  these  schemes,  and  George 


16 


The  President  and  His  Slanderers. 


William  Curtis,  a  friend  of  the  Administration, 
was  chosen  temporary  Chairman.  This  secured 
the  organization,  and,  in  the  hope  of  allaying  all 
irritation,  Mr.  Van  Wyck,  who  had  been  sup 
ported  by  the  anti- Administration  element,  was 
made  permanent  President  by  acclamation ;  and 
the  Senator  who  had  made  the  issue  was  placed 
by  Mr.  Curtis  upon  leading  committees.  To 
the  surprise  of  some  the  Senator  did  not  serve 
on  these  committees,  but  held  himself  aloof. 

Many  "office-holders"  attended  this  Conven 
tion  and  more  than  half  aided  the  anti- Adminis 
tration  cause.  Mr.  Greeley  was  a  candidate  for 
Governor,  and  was  pertinaciously  supported  by 
all  those  connected  with  the  New  York  Custom 
House ;  he  failed  from  a  want  of  confidence  in 
him,  so  general  among  delegates,  that  election 
eering  and  persuasion  could  not  prevail  against 
it ;  and  even  those  who  voted  for  him  declared 
in  many  instances  that  they  did  so  as  a  harmless 
compliment,  knowing  that  he  could  not  be 
nominated. 

The  last  duty  of  the  Convention  was  to  form 
a  State  Central  Committee ;  this  was  done  by 
the  delegation  from  each  Congressional  district 
agreeing  upon  one  member.  The  roll  of  dis 
tricts  being  called,  all,  with  one  exception,  pre 
sented  a  name ;  but  when  the  district  of  Senator 
Fenton  was  called,  it  turned  out  that  divisions 
between  his  colleagues  and  himself  had  pre 
vented  an  agreement;  and  in  consequence  of 
this  the  membership  of  the  State  Committee 
from  that  district  stood  vacant  during  the  cam 
paign.  Faithful  Republicans  throughout  the 
State  labored  hard  in  the  canvass  which  ensued. 
The  hinge  and  hope  of  the  canvass  was  the  City 
of  New  York.  Congress  had  enacted  an  election 
law,  under  which  it  was  believed  that  the  fraudu 
lent  majorities  counted  by  Tammany  agents 
would  be  largely  cut  down.  Our  friends  in  the 
ci£y  promised  us  in  the  country  that  20,000  reduc 
tion  would  surely  take  place ;  this,  with  a  full 
vote  in  the  rural  districts,  would  give  us  the 
State.  A  gain  in  the  city  was  therefore  the 
pivot  of  the  canvass,  because  Republicans  in 
districts  sure  to  elect  their  local  tickets,  would 
not  exhaust  themselves  in  piling  up  additional 
majorities  for  the  State  ticket,  if  the  majorities 
were  to  be  swamped  by  false  counts  in  the  City 
of  New  York. 

Gov.  Fenton  and  his  special  friends  were 
lukewarm  throughout  the  canvass,  the  Gover 
nor  absenting  himself  from  the  State  much  of 
the  time  ;  late  in  October  he  returned  from 
the  Western  States,  and  visited  the  City  of 
New  York,  where  he  was  gazetted  in  the 
newspapers  as  prospecting  the  result.  Up  to 
this  time,  he  had  been  silent,  but  on  the  3ist 
of  October  he  spoke.  This  was  five  days  be 
fore  the  election,  and  the  Governor  had  just  re 
turned  from  the  city,  where,  if  at  all,  the  can 
vass  was  to  be  saved ;  he,  therefore,  was  the 
man,  and  then  was  the  time,  to  tell  the  Repub 
licans  of  the  State,  whether  it  was  or  was  not 
worth  while  to  get  out  every  vote.  His  speech 
was  sent  at  once  throughout  the  Republican 
Press  of  the  State,  appearing  always  in  the 
same  words.  As  printed  in  the  New  York 
Tribune,  it  contained  this  remarkable  state 
ment  :  ' '  Troubles  came  upon  us  unfortunately 


in  other  districts,  and  now  in  the  City  of  New 
York  our  party  are  in  confusion  and  discour 
agement  growing  out  of  some  unfortunate  Fed 
eral  appointments"  Had  this  been  true,  it  is 
hard  to  see  how  any  Republican  could  have 
felt  called  upon  to  cast  such  a  wet  blanket  over 
the  party  on  the  eve  of  an  important  election. 
That  it  was  not  true  is  proved  by  the  fact  that 
when  election  day  came,  not  only  twenty  thou 
sand,  but  twenty-six  thousand,  was  struck  from 
the  Democratic  majority  in  the  city  of  New  York. 

Had  the  Governor,  instead  of  being  devoted 
to  the  Republican  party,  and  religiously  anxi 
ous  for  its  success,  been  in  collusion  with  Tam 
many  Hall,  what  could  he  have  done  so  useful 
to  the  Democracy  as  the  thing  he  did  ? 

The  result  was  all  that  a  Democrat  could  de 
sire  or  a  Republican  deplore.  We  lost  the  State, 
and  45-,ooo  Republicans  west  of  the  Hudson 
River  who  voted  at  the  gubernatorial  election 
last  before  did  not  vote  at  all ;  and  this  in  a 
season  so  fine  that  the  corn  was  all  husked,  the 
potatoes  all  dug,  the  buckwheat  all  gathered, 
and  the  roads  as  good  on  election  day  as  they 
were  in  June.  Hoffman's  counted  majority  was 
only  33,096  in  the  State,  and  the  45,000  Repub 
licans  discouraged  to  stay  at  home  would  have 
elected  Woodford  by  12,000. 

The  succeeding  year  (1871)  brought  the  same 
attempt  to  carry  the  State  Convention  against 
the  National  Administration.  Again  Tammany 
men  and  money,  volumes  of  Tribune  slanders, 
and  tireless  effort  contested  the  primaries  in 
vain.  The  convention  overlooked  the  irregular 
and  factional  course  of  Mr.  Greeley  and  his 
Tammany  allies,  in  calling  local  conventions  to 
forestall  and  defy  the  decision  of  the  State  Con 
vention  upon  the  reorganization  of  the  party  in 
the  city,  and  admitted  both  sets  of  delegates, 
the  only  condition  being  that  thereafter  the 
party  should  be  one.  Here  was  the  rub ;  the 
men  who  have  since  thrown  off  the  mask,  and 
revealed  themselves  as  deserters,  were  determined 
then  to  divide  and  destroy  the  party.  They  meant 
then  to  wrest  the  State  from  President  Grant,  and 
to  pave  the  way  for  a  contesting  delegation  to 
the  National  Convention  if  they  could  not  by 
some  artifice  seize  the  delegation  itself. 

The  good  sense  of  the  Convention  frustrated 
the  scheme,  and  then  came  the  sorry  theatrical 
of  a  secession  from  the  Convention,  led  by  fac- 
tionists  who  have  been  in  turn  the  friends  of  all 
parties  and  the  betrayers  of  all. 

"PATRONAGE,"  AND  REMOVALS. 

The  course  of  Mr.  Greeley  and  its  reference 
to  patronage  and  spoils,  is  visible  in  a  letter  he 
wrote  to  Mr.  Cornell  after  he  made  up  his  mind 
to  defeat,  if  possible,  the  weeding  out  of  Tam 
many  men  from  the  Republican  organization. 
Here  is  his  letter,  putting  his  action  squarely  on 
the  ground  of  dissatisfaction  with  the  "  appoint 
ing  power." 

NEW  YORK,  April  9,  1871. 

DEAR  SIR  :  It  gives  me  no  pleasure  to  advise  you, 
and  the  Committee  of  which  you  are  the  head,  that  I  am 
obliged  to  decline  the  part  assigned  me  by  the  State 
Committee  in  the  proposed  reorganization  of  the  Repub 
lican  Party  of  our  city.  Had  a  little  forbearance  and 
conciliation  been  minced  by  the  appointing  power  at 
Washington,  I  think  this  might  have  been  different. 

Yours,  HORACE   GREELEY.     , 


Senator   Conkling's  G-reat  Speech  at  New    York. 


17 


The  sapping  and  mining  begun  in  1870,  and 
secretly  continued  ever  since,  has  culminated  in 
the  bolt  no  longer  covered  up,  which  has  re 
cently  occurred  ;  its  strength  was  in  its  secrecy 
and  in  its  denied  existence ;  its  weakness  is  in 
its  being  known  of  all  men. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  President  removed 
friends  of  Mr.  Fenton  ;  if  this  were  true,  when 
made  an  explanation  of  the  betrayal  or  deser 
tion  of i the  party,  it  sinks  those  who  resort  to 
it  to  the  lowest  depth  of  sordid  hypocrisy.  But 
it  is  not  true.  One  friend  of  Mr.  Fenton  was 
removed  to  gratify  Mr.  Moses  H.  Grinnell,  and 
in  no  other  instance  to  my  knowledge  was  a 
friend  of  Mr.  Fenton's  displaced,  except  for 
cause  ;  while  to  this  day  the  great  body  of  those 
he  recommended  to  office  remain  in  office  still. 
To  illustrate  this,  since  President  Grant  came 
in,  not  six  Postmasters  in  the  entire  State  have 
been  appointed  at  my  instance  ;  more  than  two 
hundred  have  been  appointed  at  Senator  Fen- 
ton's  instance,  and  not  one  has  been  disturbed 
unless  for  official  delinquency. 

COLLECTOR    MURPHY. 

Mr.  Murphy  was  appointed  Collector  of  New 
York,  but  not  to  gratify  me  or  at  my  solicita 
tion.  He  has  been  held  up  as  a  scoundrel,  yet 
the  records  conclusively  prove  that  he  increased 
the  collection  of  revenue  and  diminished  the 
percentage  of  cost.  No  act  of  dishonesty  has 
to  my  knowledge  ever  been  proved  against  him. 
I  moved,  and  insisted  upon,  the  investigation 
which  was  lately  made  of  the  Custom  House — 
the  inquiry  was  conducted  by  some  of  the  best 
and  ablest  members  of  the  Senate,  and  the  re 
port  acquits  Mr.  Murphy  of  every  charge  im 
pairing  his  integrity.  I  do  not  allude  to  the 
matter,  however,  to  go  into  Mr.  Murphy's 
merits ;  I  did  not  suggest  his  appointment,  and 
during  his  collectorship  I  never  asked  or  rec 
ommended  an  appointment  at  his  hands,  not 
one.  It  was  vainly  hoped  that  there  would  be 
less  carping,  if  no  favor  to  me  was  asked  for ; 
and  none  was  ever  asked  or  received.  My  ob 
ject  is  to  show  you  the  wickedness  of  the  charge 
that  the  President  appointed  Mr.  Murphy  con 
trary  to  the  judgment  of  the  best  men  in  the 
party,  and  for  some  unusual  or  improper  reason. 

Mr.  Murphy  was  an  experienced,  successful 
business  man,  at  leisure,  and  vigorous  enough  to 
endure  the  great  strain  and  labor  of  the  place ;  if 
the  President  was  wrong  in  selecting  him,  let  me 
show  you  who  else  were  wrong. 

Here  are  some  of  those  who,  in  writing,  rec 
ommended  his  nomination  or  confirmation. 
Their  signatures  are  in  my  possession. 

Edwin  D.  Morgan,  Spofford  Brothers  £  Co., 

George  Opdyke,  John  Hoey, 

Henry  Clews,  Isaac  Dayton, 

John  A.  Griswold,  George  D.  Morgan, 

Chas.  J.  Folger,  Thos.  B.  Van  Buren, 

Edwards  Pierrepont,  John  H.  Hall, 

Isaac  H.  Bailey,'*  O.  W.  Joslyn, 

Thos.  C.  Acton,  R.W.  Marlow.Jr.  &Co., 

Chas.  W.  Griswold,  M.  Mitchell, 

Thos.  Hillhouse,  R.  H.  Arkenburgh, 

S.  H.  Wales,      '  F.  Chandler, 

Wm.  A.  Darling.  R.  W.  Bleecker, 

D.  D.  T.  Marshall,  Hooper  C.  Van  Vorst, 

Wm.  Laimbeer,  Jas.  Struthers, 

Brooks  Brothers,  Carolan  O.  B.  Bryant, 

A.  S.  Dodd,  Thos.  J.  Owen  &  Co., 

B.  S.  Luddington,  J.  E.  de  Rivera. 


J.  C.  Churchill,  M.  C,  John  Bryan, 
Orange  Ferriss,  M.C.,  Joseph  Brockan, 
Hamilton  Ward,  M.C  ,  E.  B.  Wesley, 
Giles  W.  Hotchkiss,  M.C.,          Sixty-seven  Members  of 
David  S.  Bennett,  M.C.,  the  Republican  Gene- 
William  A.  Whitbeck.  ral  Committee  of  New 
Edward  Haight,  York, 
George  Bliss,  Jr.,  Cornelius  Bortle, 
Van  Schaich  &  Co  ,  John  M.  Welch, 
F.  T.  James  &  Co.,  Henry  Tridler, 

A.  D.  Williams  &  Co.,  H.  V.  Esselstyne, 
Maxwell  &  Co.,  H.  H.  Rockfe'ller, 
Harney  &  Searles,  P.  E.  Van  Alstyne, 
Daniel  W.  Adams,  J.  W.  C.  Hogeboom, 
Hallgarten  &  Bro.,  Matthew  Hale, 
Drake  Bros.,  E.  M.  Madden, 
Edward  Brandon,  C.  Esselstyne, 
Closson  &  Hayes,  George  Dawson, 

N.  P.  Stanton,  Thomas  Parsons, 

Boyd,  Falls  &  Vincent,  Silas  F.  Smith, 

Plane  &  Van  Emburgh,  N.  Lapham, 

Taylor  Brothers,  Republican     General 

John  W.  Brown,  Committee    of  Kings 

B.  M.  Nevas,  County,    New    York, 
Cornelius  Esselstyne,  and        residents       of 
John  R.  Currie,  Brooklyn,  N.  V.,    no 
Hedden,     Winchester    &  in  number, 

Co.,  E.     W.       Leavenworth, 

Glendinning,     Davis     &  and  others,  residents 

Armory,  of  Syracuse. 

Besides  these  many  others  recommended  Mr. 
Murphy's  appointment ;  this  list  includes  only 
those  who  addressed  me.  It  does  not  include 
any  of  the  recommendations  made  to  the  Presi 
dent  or  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury. 

You  will,  I  trust,  pardon  the  time  given  to 
these  facts ;  if  it  were  right  to  detain  you,  many 
others  might  be  stated,  showing  the  injustice 
and  falsehood  which  have  been  piled  upon  the 
President,  and  upon  me,  in  this  regard.  The 
whole  pretense,  that  the  friends  of  Gov.  Fenton 
were  ostracised  because  they  were  his  friends,  is 
the  veriest  sham  that  could  be  palmed  off  upon 
the  public  ;  and  yet  the  argument  of  spoils  is 
used  without  a  blush  to  extenuate  the  acts  of 
those  who,  for  two  years,  have  been  plotting  the 
destruction  of  the  party. 

This  clap-trap  about  improper  appointments 
is  the  same  in  substance  as  that  heard  in  the 
time  of  Jackson,  and  of  John  Quincy  Adams, 
and  there  is  less  cause  for  it  relatively  now  then 
there  was  then. 

MR.  SUMNER  AND  MR.  GREELEY  HATE 

"PRETENSION." 

It  is  as  untruthful,  as  the  pretense  that  the 
"President  is  a  quarreler,"  that  he  insisted  upon 
a  renomination,  or  that  he  is  a  pretentious  man. 
The  President  is  charged  with  "pretension"  by 
Mr.  Sumner  in  a  speech  written  and  printed  be 
forehand,  in  which  Mr.  Sumner  speaks  of  him 
self,  and  praises  himself,  one  hundred  and  fifty- 
six  times,  and  flatters  himself  thoroughly  and 
copiously,  twenty  times.  But  Sumner  is  nothing 
to  Greeley.  Greeley  thinks  Grant ' '  pretentious  " 
too,  and  Greeley  at  the  Boston  Jubilee,  in  ex 
plaining  his  own  fitness  for  the  Presidency, 
modestly  spoke  of  himself  twenty  times  in  ten 
minutes: — this  is  twice  a  minute.  Had  Sumner 
used  the  personal  pronoun  at  the  same  rate  no 
printing  office  would  have  had  big  I's  enough  to 
set  up  the  speech. 

THE  "MILITARY  RING." 

But  we  may  not  stop  here  in  counting  the 
President's  crimes; — he  has,  we  are  told,  a 
"military  ring"  at  the  White  House,  and  turns 


18 


The  President  and  His  Slanderers. 


the  White  House  into  a  "military  barracks." 
When  he  moved  into  the  White  House  he  heard 
soldiers  patroling  in  the  hall,  and  when  he  asked 
them  what  it  meant,  they  said  they  were  Presi 
dent  Johnson's  body  guard  ;  he  told  them  he 
wanted  no  guard,  and  sent  them  to  their  quar 
ters.  The  next  day  he  gave  orders  removing 
all  troops  from  Washington,  and  not  a  military 
company  has  ever  been  there  since. 

The  "military  ring"  consists  of  three  young 
men  who  write  for  the  President  without  a 
farthing  of  expense  to  the  Treasury.  The 
President  is  authorized  by  law  to  employ  and 
pay  Secretaries.  The  gentlemen  who  assist  him 
were  on  his  staff  in  the  war,  and  are  now  on  the 
staff  of  Gen.  Sherman ;  their  commissions  are 
their  own ;  the  President  cannot  take  them 
away ;  and  now,  in  time  of  peace,  Gen.  Sher 
man  does  not  require  their  services.  One  of 
them  is  detailed  to  oversee  the  public  parks, 
and  the  other  to  assist  the  President,  which 
they  do  from  love  of  the  man,  and  without  a 
cent  of  pay  beyond  what  they  would  draw  if 
they  sat  at  Gen.  Sherman's  head -quarters,  doing 
nothing.  This  is  the  whole  of  it ;  exactly  like 
the  case  of  Col.  Bliss  and  his  father-in-law, 
President  Taylor,  or  the  case  of  Donelson  and 
Jackson,  or  the  case  of  Andrew  Johnson  and 
the  three  or  four  army  officers  who  'assisted  him. 
It  saves  several  thousand  dollars  a  year,  does 
the  public  business,  and  nobody  is  harmed. 

"SEA-SIDE  LOITERINGS." 

The  catalogue  of  the  President's  atrocities 
would  be  incomplete  without  one  other  thing. 
During  ten  or  twelve  weeks  of  heat  and  fever 
and  ague  at  Washington,  his  family  go  to  a 
cottage  at  the  sea-side,  and  he  goes  and  comes 
from  there  to  the  Capital. 

It  is  eight  hours  from  the  White  House  to 
the  cottage,  with  two  mails  a  day  and  a  tele 
graph  every  instant.  Nothing  can  occur,  how 
ever  suddenly,  demanding  his  attention,  with 
out  his  being  within  immediate  call ;  yet  this 
is  the  occasion  of  constant  hullabaloo.  Gov. 
Hoffman  leaves  his  State  and  resides  at  New 
port,  R.  I. ,  for  the  summer.  Mr.  James  Brooks, 
though  member  of  Congress,  goes  to  China 
and  Japan,  not  returning  even  when  Congress 
meets.  Gen.  Jackson  used  to  spend  weeks  at 
the  Rip  Raps  in  Hampton  Roads,  where  no  in 
telligence  could  reach  him  from  Washington  in 
days,  and  then  only  by  special  messenger,  and 
whence  he  could  not  return  for  days,  if  sent  for. 
No  telegraph,  railroad,  daily  mail,  or  even 
steamboat,  plied  there  then.  President  Adams, 
separated  from  Massachusetts  by  a  stage-coach 
ride  of  many  clays,  used  to  spend  weeks  at  his 
home.  Washington  passed  much  of  his  time  at 
Mount  Vernon,  and  even  that  was  further  re 
moved  in  communication  with  the  Capital  then, 
than  Long  Branch  is  now. 

Rulers  in  all  countries  have  felt  at  liberty  to 
tarry  a  distance  from  their  official  residence 
during  a  portion  of  the  year  ;  but  no  examples, 
experience,  or  common  sense  stand  in  the  way 
of  the  crucifiers  of  Grant. 

The  public,  however,  will  be  satisfied  with 
one  fact,  viz  :  that  no  instance  has  yet  been 
discovered  or  pretended,  in  which  anything, 


however  small,  was  neglected  or  left  undone 
because  the  President  was  absent.  This  one 
fact  answers  a  hurricane  of  abuse. 

I  have  discussed,  perhaps,  at  inexcusable 
length,  the  paltry  and  personal  slanders  drag 
ged  into  the  campaign,  and  yet  nothing  has 
been  said  of  the  blameless,  simple,  daily  life 
of  the  President,  nor  of  his  innocence  of  a  quar 
relsome  disposition. 

He  quarreled  with  Lee,  and  every  other  rebel 
while  the  rebellion  lasted.  He  settled  that 
quarrel,  and  has  never  quarreled  since,  unless 
it  be  quarreling  not  to  obey  intolerable  dicta 
tion,  and  simply  to  let  alone  men  who  oppose 
and  denounce  him. 

If  there  be  any  charge  against  the  President 
which  have  escaped  me,  I  will  speak  of  it,  if 
any  one  will  bring  it  to  mind.  If  there  be 
none,  let  us  rise  from  gossip  to  history  ;  from 
scandal  to  business. 

Let  us  turn  from  the  man  to  the  magistrate, 
and  scan  his  official  record  and  stewardship. 

WHAT    THE    ADMINISTRATION    HAS    DONE — 
FOREIGN    AFFAIRS. 

What  has  the  Administration  done  in  three 
years?  First,  it  has  maintained  our  rights 
with  every  foreign  power,  and  kept  the  peace 
with  all  the  world.  Gov.  Seward  said  to  me 
last  year  after  he  had  girdled  the  earth  with  his 
travels,  "How  remarkable  is  our  success  in 
foreign  affairs  ;  but  two  years  ago  Russia  was 
our  only  friend  in  Christendom,  and  now  America 
has  not  an  enemy  in  the  world."  He  proceeded 
to  say  that  this  good  result  came  from  the  tem 
perate  and  just  course  of  our  Government.  Mr. 
Sumner  has  lately  told  us  that  we  are  in  a  "mud 
dle  with  everybody. "  Can  any  of  you  tell  with 
whom  we  are  in  a  "muddle?"  Can  any  of 
you  name  a  sea,  a  continent,  or  an  island  where 
our  flag  is  not  respected  ?  Can  any  of  you  name 
a  commercial  centre  in  which  our  securities  are 
not  sought  ?  Can  any  of  you  name  a  power 
which  denies  a  right  to  one  American  citizen  ? 
Spain's  release  of  Dr.  Houard,  whose  American 
citizenship  is  very  doubtful,  leaves  no  contro 
versy,  no  contested  matter,  with  any  power  on 
earth,  save  England. 

With  England,  preceding  Administrations 
failed  to  settle  large  and  dangerous  questions. 
This  Administration  has  composed  them  all  in 
one  treaty,  applauded  by  the  country  and  the 
world  as  one  of  the  best  products  of  statesman 
ship  and  civilization.  Recently,  a  difference 
arose  as  to  the  construction  of  the  treaty,  and 
England  was  unwilling  and  afraid  to  submit 
the  question  to  the  tribunal  to  which  it  plainly 
belonged.  The  British  Government  took  the 
ground  that  they  had  agreed  to  a  treaty  which 
did  not  contain  what  they  intended  ;  that  their 
meaning  was  not  set  down  in  language  so  plain 
that  they  were  willing  to  trust  it  to  the  arbitra 
tion  at  Geneva  ;  and  they  insisted  that  we  should 
withdraw  part  of  our  claims.  This  was  a  strange 
position,  and  involved  a  humiliating  admission  ; 
it  was  saying  virtually  that  their  agents  had  not 
been  able  to  cope  with  ours.  Indeed  this  was 
said  without  disguise,  and  with  taunts,  in  the 
British  Parliament.  There  is  nothing  here 
surely  to  wound  American  pride. 


Senator  Conklintfs  Great  Speech  at  Neio    York. 


19 


England,  with  a  Parliament  eight  hundred 
years  old,  renowned  for  centuries  in  exploits  of 
diplomacy,  sent  five  of  her  trained  men  to  bar 
gain  with  an  infant  nation  scarce  out  of  its 
swaddling  clothes  ;  an  agreement  was  made, 
written  and  signed,  and  afterward  England  dis 
covered  that  it  did  not  read  as  she  says  she 
thought  it  did,  and  so  she  threw  up  the  sponge, 
and  cried  out  that  she  had  been  outfought  and 
outwitted  in  her  o\vn  field  of  law  and  diplomacy. 
Noblemen  and  University  men  were  England's 
Commissioners — they  sealed  the  treaty  with 
signet  rings  bearing  ancient  coats-of-arms  ;  but 
the  gossips  said  thgt  one  of  our  unfilled  and 
self-educated  Commissioners  had  nothing  to  seal 
with  except  a  button.  This  seems  the  story 
over  again  of  the  poor  boy  with  a  pin-hook  and 
twine,  who  caught  more  fish  than  the  rich  boy 
with  the  rod,  the  reel,  the  line  of  silk,  and  the 
best  of  fish-hooks. 

England's  refusal  to  go  to  trial,  unless  we 
would  agree  not  to  prove  or  argue  part  of  our 
case,  was  met  on  our  side  by  the  statement  that 
we  insisted  upon  having  the  law  settled  for 
the  future  in  regard  to  indirect  damages  so 
called. 

Our  Government  insisted  that  hereafter  Eng 
land  should  never  demand  any  damages  from  us, 
except  such  as  she  admitted  to  be  within  the  law 
of  nations  now.  Upon  this  ground  the  Presi 
dent  declined  to  withdraw  any  of  our  claims, 
saying,  however,  that  indirect  losses  would  not 
l»e  pressed,  provided  by  agreement  between  the 
parties,  or  by  a  decision  of  the  Court,  we  could 
be  guaranteed  for  the  future  against  similar  lia 
bilities.  Negotiations  ensued,  resulting  in  a 
supplemental  article  or  clause  of  the  treaty,  and 
before  this  was  finally  accepted  the  tribunal  at 
Geneva  did,  what  we  all  the  while  maintained 
its  right  to  do,  and  made  a  decision  good  for  the  fu 
ture  as  well  as  the  present,  and  good  for  us  as  well 
as  for  England,  denying  the  right  of  one  nation 
to  recover  certain  kinds  of  damage  from  another. 
By  this  rule  we  will  settle  with  England  as  often 
as  she  is  a  belligerent  and  we  a  neutral ;  and  if 
she  is  content,  we  should  be.  We  are  to  be  the 
neutral  hereafter  ;  we  shall  have  no  more  rebel 
lions;  no  foreign  power  will  be  impatient  to  get 
up  a  war  with  us ;  but  England,  differently 
situated,  with  her  elbows  hitting  the  elbows  of 
other  nations,  may  not  be  so  fortunate ;  and 
when  her  commerce  and  her  cause  suffers  from 
American  citizens,  or  from  cruisers  or  privateers 
built  in  America,  we  will  measure  to  her  the  rule 
of  damages  she  asks  for  now.  Whether  England 
keeps  or  breaks  the  treaty,  it  will  remain  the 
greatest  event  of  diplomacy  in  our  history.  Had 
Hamilton  Fish  rendered  no  other  public  service 
in  his  life,  his  ability,  devotion  and  success  in 
this  great  matter  would  inscribe  his  name  high 
up  on  the  roll  of  illustrious  names.  The  only 
error  pretended  in  the  management  of  the  Ala 
bama  claims  has  been  the  maintenance  of  views 
of  which  the  noisiest  advocate  always  has  been 
Mr.  Sumner  ;  but  even  he  has  not  succeeded  in 
producing  a  "muddle"  with  any  foreign  power, 
not  even  with  the  aid  of  his  friend  Schurz, 
by  his  romances  and  vagaries,  touching  the 
sale,  by  American  merchants,  of  arms  to 
France. 


FINANCES,    DEBT,    TAXES,    RETRENCHMENT. 

The  public  debt  has  been  paid  as  no  one 
dared  expect  or  hope.  The  present  Adminis 
tration  found  a  national  debt  of  $2,700,000,000. 
During  Andrew  Johnson's  Administration  the 
whole  reduction  of  this  debt  was  $13,655,668. 
The  annual  interest  account  was  $128,502,- 
102.24.  The  annual  expense  account  averaged 
$179,271,680;  making  an  annual  draft  upon  the 
Treasury  of  $307,773,782.24.  This  annual 
draft  was  met  by  internal  taxes  and  customs 
duties. 

Under  Andrew  Johnson  annual  taxes  aver 
aged  as  follows  : 

Internal  taxes $162,194,491  29 

Customs  duties .     .     .    .     .     .      193,691,069  70 

The  country  was  flooded  with  paper  money, 
and  trade  deranged  with  inflated  prices.  Cur 
rency  ranged  from  thirty-five  to  seventy-one 
cents  on  the  dollar.  Our  opponents  scouted  our 
ability  to  reduce  the  debt ;  they  said  that  no 
such  debt  ever  had  been  paid  or  ever  would  be. 

The  National  Democratic  Convention  of  1868 
declared  against  its  payment  in  coin  and  in 
favor  of  subjecting  it  to  taxation. 

Such  was  the  condition  of  things  confronting 
us  in  March,  1869.  Up  to  July  i,  1872,  there 
has  been  paid  of  principal  of  the  debt  $333,976,- 
916.39.  This  is  a  payment  every  month  of 
$8, 349, 422.  It  is  a  payment  already  of  1 3  2 1  -  IOO 
per  cent,  of  the  whole  debt,  and  at  the  same 
rate  of  payment  not  a  dollar  would  remain  in 
twenty-one  years. 

Saving  of  annual  interest  in  coin,  $20,000,000. 

About  $300,000,000  has  been  refunded, at  4^ 
and  5  per  cent.,  saving  an  annual  interest  of 
$3,000,000,  and  up  to  the  maturity  of  the  new 
bonds  $20,000,000,  and  paving  the  way  to  refund 
ing  $1,000,000,000  more  at  still  lower  interest. 

The  premium  on  gold  has  been  reduced  from 
forty  per  cent,  to  twelve  per  cent. 

Great  reduction  of  taxes  preceded  and  fol 
lowed  Gen.  Grant's  inauguration. 

Since  he  came  in,  and  prior  to  the  last  session 
of  Congress,  annual  internal  taxes  were  reduced 
$55,212,000.  Tariff  annually  reduced  $29, 526,- 
409,09.  Total,  $84,738,409.09.  Despite  these 
reductions,  the  increase  of  revenue  accounted  for 
under  Gen.  Grant  over  the  same  period  preced 
ing  is  $84,994,049.74.  At  the  last  session  of 
Congress  taxes  were  further  reduced  (annually) 
$62,000,000. 

This  cuts  off  pretty  much  all  internal  taxes, 
except  on  whiskey,  beer,  tobacco  and  banks, 
and  a  portion  of  the  stamp  tax  ;  the  income  tax 
dies  this  year.  Tea  and  coffee,  for  the  first 
time  in  our  memory,  are  wholly  free.  The 
people  have  paid  heretofore  $18,000,000  annu 
ally  on  tea  and  coffee. 

At  the  same  time,  with  this  work  of  reduction, 
pensions  to  soldiers  have  been  largely  increased, 
and  large  appropriations  made  to  improve  rivers 
and  harbors.  At  their  wits'  end  how  to  meet 
these  facts,  our  enemies  have  started  a  new  idea. 

WHAT    HAS    THE    ADMINISTRATION    TO    DO 
WITH    PAYING   THE   DEBT? 

From  Washington  down,  every  Administration 
has  been  tried  by  its  financial  results.  But  now 


The  President  and  His  Slanderers. 


we  hear  that  the  authorities  deserve  no  credit  for 
paying  the  debt,  that  the  people,  have  paid  it. 
Of  course  the  people  have  paid  it,  but  who  has 
honestly  collected  and  accounted  for  the  money  ? 
Who  has  reduced  the  expenses  ?  Who  has  up 
held  the  public  credit?  Who  has  cheapened 
the  interest?  Who  has  wisely  applied  the 
money  ?  Who  has  made  the  greenback  in  your 
pocket,  that  used  to  be  worth  only  half  its  face, 
almost  as  good  as  gold  ?  The  people  paid  taxes 
under  Andrew  Johnson  twice  as  great  as  they 
pay  now.  Why  was  not  twice  as  much  of  the 
debt  paid  then?  Why  was  only  $13,000,000 
of  the  debt  paid  then,  with  extravagant  taxa 
tion?  Under  Andrew  Johnson,  the  whiskey 
ring,  the  contractors,  and  other  "Liberals," 
preyed  upon  the  revenue  so,  that  it  is  calculated 
one-quarter  of  the  whole  was  lost.  Under  the 
present  Administration,  after  taxes  were  lessened 
$84,000,000  a  year,  collections  increased  $84,- 
000,000.  Did  the  people  do  that? 

If  one  of  your  agents  made  a  given  amount  of 
money  go  twice  as  far  as  an  agent  before  him 
had  done,  would  it  be  you,  or  the  agent  to  be 
credited  or  blamed? 

But  look  a  little  further.  The  expenses  every 
where  have  been  reduced,  and  so  reduced  that 
they  are  less  per  capita  this  year  than  they  were 
under  Washington,  and  less  than  they  were  un 
der  any  Administration  since,  with  only  four  ex 
ceptions,  and  in  case  of  these  four  the  advantage 
is  only  apparent  and  but  a  few  cents.  Com 
pare  the  year  1860  under  Buchanan,  with  last 
year,  1871.  In  1860,  the  population  being 
31,443,321,  the  expenses  were  $1.95  for  each 
person  ;  1871,  population  38,555,983,  expenses 
$1.76  for  each  person.  There  is  one  great  dif 
ference  between  these  two  years  not  shown  by 
the  figures. 

In  1860,  the  whole  amount  expended  for 
public  buildings,  improvements  of  rivers  and 
harbors,  and  other  public  works  throughout  the 
CQuntry,  was  only  $2,913,371.48. 

In  1871,  such  public  improvements  were  made 
and  paid  for,  to  the  amount  of  $10,733,759.05. 

If  allowance  be  made  for  these  lasting  im 
provements,  greater  during  the  last  two  years 
than  before,  the  actual  cost  per  head  of  govern 
ing  the  country  under  Grant,  is  as  small  as  it 
ever  was  since  the  foundation  of  the  Government. 

In  1858,  the  War  Department  cost  $25,679,- 
121.63.  In  1859,  it  cost  $23,154,720.53. 

In  1860,  under  Floyd,  the  accounts  of  the 
Department  were  not  closed,  but  went  over  in 
part  to  Lincoln's  Administration. 

In  1871,  the  War  Department  cost  $22,376,- 
981.28. 

Taking  the  whole  running  expenses  of  the 
Government,  for  the  Executive,  Legislative  and 
Judicial  Departments,  including  the  Army  and 
Navy,  and  Foreign  Ministers,  Consuls,  and 
Agents,  the  cost  in  1860  was  $61,402,408.64. 

The  same  account  in  1 87 1  was  $68, 684, 6 1 3.92. 

With  new  States  and  Territories,  with  seven 
millions  more  population,  with  new  Courts, 
and  the  Internal  Revenue  establishment,  the 
whole  excess  of  cost  in  1871,  over  1860,  was 
$7,282,205.28. 

Here  is  an  increase  of  thirteen  per  cent,  of 
cost,  with  an  increase  of  twenty-five  per  cent. 


of  population,  saying  nothing  of  increased  de 
mands. 

The  "Reformers"  had  not  looked  up  these 
figures  when  Mr.  Trumbull  stated  at  Cooper 
Institute,  that  the  expenses  of  the  Government, 
aside  from  interest  and  pensions,  ought  to  be 
not  more  than  thirty-three  per  cent,  greater  now 
than  before  the  war ;  it  turns  out  that  the  in 
crease  is  only  about  one-third  as  much  as  he 
thinks  it  should  be. 

CIVIL  SERVICE  REFORM. 

During  the  present  year  large  additional  re 
ductions  are  to  come  ;  internal  revenue  districts 
are  to  be  reduced  to  eighty  in  all ;  supervisors 
of  revenue  to  ten  in  all ;  deputies  and  assistants 
will  vanish  -\vith  the  taxes  they  heretofore  col 
lected,  and  only  a  skeleton  of  the  revenue  es 
tablishment  will  be  left.  Four  millions  and  a 
half  will  be  saved  this  year  in  the  cost  of  con 
ducting  the  Internal  Revenue  Bureau. 

The  Freedmen's  Bureau,  established  by  Lin 
coln  and  Stanton,  and  Sherman  and  Howard, 
and  vetoed  by  Andrew  Johnson,  which  has  cost 
much  money  and  done  much  good,  is  this  year 
to  be  finally  wound  up. 

These  things  added  to  the  pruning  which  the 
army  and  navy  and  Indian  and  revenue  service 
have  undergone,  make  this  the  best  Adminis 
tration  in  civil  service  reform  the  country  ever 
had.  In  civil  service  reform  Grant  is  the  pio 
neer  President.  No  one  before  him  inaugura 
ted  or  proposed  it.  Andrew  Johnson,  a  deser 
ter  from  his  party,  had,  by  using  appointments 
as  bribes  and  threats,  made  patronage  a  mere 
corruption  fund.  Who  found  fault  then  ?  The 
whole  Democratic  party  justified  and  applauded 
it.  Where  were  our  virtuous  and  edifying  Re 
formers  then,  Trumbull  and  the  rest?  The 
Tenure  of  Office  act  only  required  the  assent  of 
the  Senate  to  removals,  but  the  Democrats 
made  war  even  upon  that,  holding  that  the  Pres 
ident  should  be  left  absolute  and  unfettered. 
When  Grant  came  in  he  help  to  perfect  the  pre 
sent  Tenure  of  Office  law,  so  as  to  put  a  check 
upon  himself.  In  three  Messages  the  President 
has  urged  civil  service  reform,  and  has  given  it 
his  whole  influence.  Under  a  mere  permission 
not  requiring  anything  of  him,  he  appointed  a 
Board  to  prepare  rules  and  regulations  govern 
ing  appointments,  and  establishing  competitive 
examinations  ;  and  these  rules  he  has  diligently 
put  in  force  ;  and  yet  he  is  railed  at  by  men 
who  quarreled  with  him,  merely  because  they 
could  not  control  more  patronage.  Could  any 
President  have  done  more  ? 

He  might  have  appointed  his  enemies,  and 
turned  out  his  friends.  Nothing  else  would 
have  silenced  the  pack  now  barking  at  his  heels. 

DEFAULTERS   DETECTED   AND    PUNISHED. 

Remorseless  rigor  has  ferreted  out  and  pun 
ished  delinquents  and  defaulters.  Most  of  them 
have  not  been  men  appointed  by  Grant,  but 
those  whose  crimes  began  under  past  Adminis 
trations  ;  some  of  them  have  been  men,  recom 
mended  by  "  Reformers,"  now  mouthing  about 
bad  appointments  ;  but  wherever  found,  they 
have  been  caught,  if  possible,  and  when  caught, 
nothing  has  protected  them.  , 


Senator  Conkling's  Great  Speech  at  New   York. 


Hodge,  a  Paymaster,  and  a  Democrat  in 
politics,  'embezzled  for  years  under  Andrew 
Johnson,  but  was  never  detected  till  after  Grant 
came  in;  then  he  was  hurried  to  a  penitentiary. 
Norton,  Money-Order  Superintendent  in  the 
New  York  Post-office,  began  his  depredations 
under  Andrew  Johnson,  and  took  more  than 
$30,000,  but  was  never  found  out  till  last  year  ; 
then  he  was  arrested,  and  it  turned  out  that 
Horace  Greeley  was  one  of  the  postmaster's 
bondsmen.  A  prosecution  is  in  progress,  and  if 
Mr.  Greeley  shouldn't  happen  to  be  elected,  he 
will  be  obliged  to  pay  up — the  amount  is  $i  15,- 
428. 7 1  and  interest.  It  is  upon  such  facts  as  these 
that  "Reformers"  and  other  Democrats  make 
hue  and  cry  about  defalcations  under  Gen.  Grant. 
Will  any  of  you  name  the  Democratic  official 
thief  who  was  ever  punished  by  Democrats  ? 

The  City  of  New  York  has  swarmed  with 
plunderers,  from  the  Big  "Boss"  to  the  littlest 
wiggler  of  Tammany  Hall ;  they  are  all  Demo 
crats,  and  their  guilt  of  stealing  tens  of  millions 
has  been  notorious  for  more  than  a  year.  Gov 
ernor,  Judges,  District  Attorney,  Sheriff,  po 
lice,  all  are  Democrats,  but  not  a  thief  has 
been  punished,  nor  a  stolen  dollar  recovered 
back.  All  these  thieves  are  for  Greeley ;  they 
all  shout  for  Greeley  and  "Reform,"  and  all 
curse  Grant. 

The  Homestead  policy  has  been  extended  so 
as  to  give  a  hundred  and  sixty  acres  of  land  to 
every  soldier  and  sailor  who  served  for  ninety 
days,  and  was  honorably  discharged. 

American  ship-building  has  received  the  first 
real  encouragement  for  years.  By  the  recent 
Tariff  act,  all  materials  for  ship-building  will, 
by  means  of  drawback,  come  in  duty  free,  and 
thus  American  ship-yards  will  be  enabled  to 
compete,  as  to  materials,  with  the  ship-yards  of 
the  world. 

"CENTRALISM." — HOW    CONGRESS    HAS    CEN 
TRALIZED. 

American  citizens,  high  and  low,  rich  and 
poor,  black  and  white,  whether  in  Spain,  on  the 
high  seas,  or  in  the  South,  have  been  protected. 
But  this  is  called  ''centralism."  Every  civilized 
government  may  protect  its  citizens  in  the  utter 
most  ends  of  the  earth,  but  when  the  United 
States  interposes  to  check  murders,  and  burn 
ings,  and  barbarities  at  which  humanity  shudders, 
perpetrated  by  thousands,  and  overawing  all 
local  authority,  it  is  suddenly  discovered  that  we 
are  in  danger  of  "centralism."  This  discovery 
is  made  by  Mr.  Greeley  and  the  very  men  who 
cried  the  loudest  for  the  Ku-klux  law.  Here  are 
Greeley's  words,  spoken  June  12,  1871,  after  he 
came  back  from  the  South : 

"  I  hold  our  Government  bound  by  its  duty  of  pro 
tecting  our  citizens  in  their  fundamental  rights,  to  pass 
and  enforce  laws  for  the  extirpation  of  the  execrable  Ku- 
klux  conspiracy  ;  and  if  it  has  not  the  power  to  do  it, 
then  I  say  our  Government  is  no  Government,  but  a 
sham.  I  therefore,  on  every  proper  occasion,  advocated 
and  justified  the  Ku-klux  act.  I  hold  it  especially  desi 
rable  for  the  South  ;  and  if  it  does  not  prove  strong 
enough  to  effect  its  purpose,  I  hope  it  will  be  made 
stronger  and  stronger." 

The  law  here  spoken  of  is  the  law  exactly  as 
it  exists  today,  including  the  habeas  corpus 
suspension,  which  has  now  expired  by  its  own 
limitation. 


No  other  act  of  "centralism"  has  been  en 
acted  of  late,  unless  it  is  an  amendment  of  the 
Election  law,  vehemently  demanded  and  ap 
proved  by  Mr.  Greeley.  Hear  what  he  said 
about  it  only  a  few  months  ago : 

"  It  is  urged  by  the  Democratic  organs  that  the  law  is 
to  be  enforced  in  State  and  municipal  elections.  This  is 
done  to  make  it  more  obnoxious,  if  that  be  possible,  to 
their  party.  But,  unfortunately  this  is  an  error.  The 
law  applies  only  to  Presidential  and  Congressional  elec 
tions,  though  we  heartily  wish  it  could  be  made  to  apply 
to  all  others." 

The  "centralism"  of  this  law  consists  in  al 
lowing  the  Courts,  upon  the  application  of  ten 
citizens,  to  appoint  two  persons,  one  from  each 
political  party,  to  watch  the  polls  at  which 
members  of  Congress  and  Presidential  electors 
are  to  be  chosen.  These  watchers  have  no 
power  to  arrest  any  one  or  to  do  anything  ex 
cept  to  look  on  as  witnesses  and  see  whether 
fraud  takes  place — and  this  without  a  farthing 
of  compensation  or  expense.  Do  you  think  any 
honest  voter  will  be  offended  by  this  ?  Will 
any  honest  man  object  to  so  harmless  a  safe 
guard  against  fraudulent  voting  and  fraudulent 
counting?  Since  the  Tammany  exposures  no  man 
doubts  that  the  voice  of  the  ballot-box  has  been 
stifled  for  years  by  election  frauds  ;  and  here  is 
a  law  which  can  do  no  harm,  and  under  which 
the  Democrats  themselves  said,  we  had  the  only 
approach  to  a  fair  election  in  New  York  that  had 
happened  for  years. 

REAL    DANGERS   ARE   STATE   RIGHTS   AND 
REBEL   CLAIMS. 

No,  my  friends,  the  cry  of  "centralism"  is  a 
mere  fetch;  the  real  danger  is  the  other  way.  De 
centralization,  which  means  State  Rights  in  the 
old  pestilent  secession  sense,  is  the  real  danger. 
You  need  to  stand  guard  against  the  doctrine  of 
paramount  State  sovereignty  which  ushered  in 
rebellion,  and  which,  if  it  gain  head,  will  usher 
in  the  payment  of  the  rebel  debt,  the  payment 
of  rebel  pensions,  the  payment  of  losses  from 
the  ravages  of  the  war,  and  a  brood  of  dire 
heresies. 

This  is  no  chimera.  Democrats  and  "Re 
formers  "  struck  hands,  at  the  last  session,  in 
admitting  rebels  to  the  Court  of  Claims,  to  re 
cover  for  their  cotton  captured  in  the  war;  and 
every  Democrat,  with  most  of  the  new  converts 
in  the  Senate,  voted  to  pay  from  the  Treasury 
rebel  claimants,  for  carrying  the  mail  in  the 
Southern  States  after  they  went  into  rebellion  ; 
an  act  which  Republicans  prevented  after  a 
weary  contest. 

"Centralism"  is  a  mere  goblin.  Whenever 
Congress  transcends  the  Constitution  the  Court 
will  so  decide,  and  the  people  will  apply  the 
corrective.  But  watch  you,  and  pray  to  be  de 
livered  from  that  dogma  of  State  independence, 
which  once  drenched  the  land  in  blood  and 
covered  it  with  taxes  and  with  mourning.  All 
the  "centralism"  we  have  now  is  a  strong  and 
stable  Government,  under  which  the  nation  pros 
pers,  with  safety  to  property,  labor,  liberty  and 
hfe.  Woe  to  the  day,  and  woe  to  the  hour, 
when  the  people  change  it  off,  for,  they  know 
not  what. 

A  contented  mind  is  great  riches  ;  and  to  let 
well  enough  alone  is  the  sum  of  wisdom. 


22 


The  President  and  His  Slanderers. 


•      CANT   ABOUT   INVESTIGATIONS. 

With  some  minds  the  greater  the  humbug, 
the  greater  the  sensation.  The  country  is  filled 
with  factional  out-cry,  and  one  of  the  catch- 
Avords  is  "investigations."  "Reformers"  in 
the  Senate  wasted  weeks  and  months  in  at 
tempting  to  mislead  the  public  in  this  respect. 
It  was  brazenly  pretended  that  men  like  Buck 
ingham  of  Connecticut,  and  Hamlin  of  Maine, 
and  Frelinghuysen  of  New  Jersey,  and  Howe 
of  Wisconsin,  and  Anthony  of  Rhode  Island, 
and  other  of  the  best  and  purest  statesmen  of 
the  nation,  attempted  to  cloak  fraud  and  stifle 
inquiry.  The  New  York  Tribune  and  other 
unprincipled  newspapers  published  pretended 
speeches  which  were  never  made,  put  into  the 
mouths  of  Administration  Senators,  as  uttered 
in  caucus,  by  myself  among  others,  declaring 
that  the  Administration  should  not  be  investi 
gated.  Nothing  could  be  more  false.  No 
friend  of  the  Administration  ever  objected  to 
the  most  searching  and  sweeping  investigation, 
but  always  the  contrary.  The  only  men  who 
thwarted  or  delayed  investigation  were  our 
opponents.  They  did,  as  I  will  show  you. 

On  the  first  day  of  the  session  I  offered  a  re 
solution  instructing  the  Military  Committee  to 
investigate  the  case  of  Hodge,  and  see  whether 
anybody  else  was  at  fault,  and  what  could  be 
done  to  close  the  door  for  the  future.  Mr. 
Trumbull  insisted  that  there  should  be  one  and 
the  same  committee  to  investigate  everything. 
He  moved  such  an  amendment,  and  in  such 
form  as  to  make  Carl  Schurz  Chairman,  the 
plan  of  the  "Liberals"  being  to  make  Mr. 
Schurz  charioteer  of  a  mud-machine  to  befoul 
the  party  during  this  canvass  in  the  name  of  the 
Senate. 

We  urged  that  one  committee  could  not  in 
vestigate  everything,  and  that  to  make  the 
work  thorough  it  must  be  parcelled  out  to  dif 
ferent  committees.  This  was  met  with  a  storm 
of  electioneering  flings  and  insinuations,  which 
consumed  days.  Finally,  to  bring  the  matter 
to  an  end,  we  acquiesced  in  having  a  single 
committee  to  which  all  investigations  should  go. 
Every  man  of  sense  must  see  that  if  the  object 
was  full  and  speedy  inquiry ,  this  was  not  the 
way,  and  so  the  event  proved. 

When  the  Committee  was  raised,  I  moved 
an  investigation  of  the  New  York  Custom 
House ;  Mr.  Trumbull  passionately  objected, 
and  through  the  resolution  over  by  a  point  of 
order.  As  soon  as  a  majority  could  do  so,  it 
was  taken  up  and  passed  ;  the  Hodge  resolution 
followed,  and  other  resolutions,  and  what  was 
the  result  ?  The  Committee,  thus  over-loaded, 
was  able  only  to  complete  the  Custom  House 
inquiry,  and  this  snowed  under  everything  else. 
The  Hodge  matter,  and  other  things,  wait  ;  and 
when  the  Presidential  election  is  over,  and  there 
is  nothing  to  be  made  by  clap-trap  and  bun 
combe,  we  shall  be  permitted  probably  to  refer 
them  to  appropriate  committees.  When  the 
French  arms  resolution  was  offered  by  Mr. 
Sumner,  the  Republican  Senators  offered  to 
vote  the  investigation  instantly  ;  but  Mr.  Sum 
ner  objected,  and  asked  its  postponement. 
When  h£  moved  it  again,  all  other  business 


was  at  once  laid  aside,  and  again  the  majority 
offered  to  vote  for  the  inquiry.  But  Mr.  Sum 
ner  insisted  upon  speech-making,  and  he  and 
Schurz  went  at  it,  attempting  to  prove  in  advance 
all  the  dismal  rigmarole  of  a  false  and  foolish 
preamble. 

Of  course,  their  speeches  could  not  go  un 
answered  to  the  counrty,  lest  silence  should 
seem  to  give  consent ;  and  so  days  and  weeks 
were  wasted,  when  in  five  minutes  the  pre 
tended  object  could  have  been  accomplished. 
The  pretended  object  was  not  the  real  object, 
as  everybody  knew  ;  the  aim  was  political 
effect,  and  for  this  the  "  Reformers  "  would  be 
smirch  the  Government,  even  though  the  cru 
sade  disgraced  us,  or  involved  us  with  foreign 
Powers. 

The  result,  as  you  know,  was  ruinous  to  those 
who  began  it.  The  French  arms  investigation 
is  a  fair  sample  of  the  rest.  We  had,  in  all, 
in  the  two  Houses,  fourteen  committees  set  on 
the  Administration.  Such  a  thing  was  never 
heard  of  before.  No  Administration  was  ever  so 
put  under  a  microscope;  or  pried  into  with  mali 
cious  eyes.  What  did  it  all  amount  to?  Direct 
ly  and  indirectly,  these  investigations  probably 
cost,  in  time,  money,  and  neglect  of  legislation, 
millions  of  dollars — and  who  is  benefited  ?  No 
body,  but  the  Administration  they  were  intend 
ing  to  destroy.  The  President,  and  those  for 
whom  he  is  responsible,  have  come  out  like 
pure  gold  tried  by  the  fire,  brighter  than  be 
fore — the  country  pays  the  bills,  and  the  "  Re 
formers  "  curse  in  their  sleeves  at  their  ill-luck. 

KU-KLUX   DOINGS. 

The  only  investigation  of  value  related  to  the 
condition  of  the  South.  The  Committee  on 
Southern  Outrages  made  a  report  full  of  fright 
ful  lessons.  In  ten  States  an  organization  exists 
known  as  the  "Ku-Klux  Klan,"  or  "Invisible 
Empire  of  the  South. "  It  is  a  resurrection  of  the 
remains  of  the  rebel  army.  Gen.  Forrest,  of 
Fort  Pillow,  was  its  chief  head,  or  "Grand  Cy 
clops."  It  is  a  secret  oath-bound  band.  Its 
object  is  to  kill  and  drive  out  "Radicals"  and 
"carpet-baggers,"  and  to  intimidate  the  blacks 
from  voting  against  the  Democratic  party. 
Speaking  to  those  who  have  not  read  the  evi 
dence,  the  existence,  the  nature  and  the  deeds 
of  these  assassins  are  so  incredible,  that  I  dare 
not  ask  you  to  accept  them  on  my  word.  Let 
me  state  a  few  things  contained  in  the  report, 
and  proved  by  much  testimony. 

Gen.  Forrest  admits  his  belief  that  the  order 
is  500,000  strong.  In  the  two  Carolinas,  Geor 
gia,  Alabama,  Mississippi  and  Florida,  100 
counties  have  been  kept  under  a  reign  of  terror. 
One  of  the  obligations  of  membership  is  to  com 
mit  perjury  as  a  witness  or  a  juror.  Many  lead 
ing  wealthy  men  are  among  the  actors,  and  until 
Congress  interfered,  the  State  authorities  were 
powerless,  or  unwilling  to  enforce  the  laws ; 
barbarous  atrocities  occurred  nightly,  but  no  one 
was  punished  or  even  arrested.  Whites  and 
blacks  were  murdered  and  robbed,  their  houses 
burned,  and  nameless  deeds  done  by  disguised 
bands. 

In  fourteen  counties  of  North  Carolina,  eigh 
teen  murders  were  done,  smd  315  whippings  oc- 


' Senator  Conkling^s   Great  Speech  at  New    York. 


curred.  In  nine  counties  in  South  Carolina, 
forty  murders  and  over  two  thousand  other  out 
rages.  In  twenty-nine  counties  of  Georgia  sev 
enty-two  murders  and  126  whippings.  In 
twenty-six  counties  of  Alabama  215  murders, 
and  116  other  outrages.  In  twenty  counties  of 
Mississippi  twenty-three  murders,  and  seventy- 
six  other  outrages,  and  in  a  single  county  of 
Florida  153  murders. 

In  these  ninety-nine  counties  426  murders 
were  done,  and  2,909  other  acts  of  violence. 

The  object  in  all  this,  as  extorted  from  many 
witnessess,  was  "to  put  down  Radical  rule  and 
negro  suffrage."  Thus  scourged,  the  people  of 
the  South  piteously  appealed  to  Congress  for  pro 
tection.  A  committee  was  sent  to  the  Southern 
States  to  learn  the  facts,  and  a  law  was  passed 
authorizing  the  United  States  Courts  to  act  in 
the  matter.  The  same  law  authorized  the  sus 
pension,  fora  limited  space,  of  the  habeas  cor- 
PUS,  in  case  it  should  be  necessary.  Under  this 
act  of  Congress,  at  the  January  term  of  Court  in 
South  Carolina,  501  men  were  indicted  by  the 
Grand  Jury  for  these  crimes  of  violence.  In  the 
Northern  District  of  Mississippi,  490  were  indict 
ed,  and  in  the  Southern  District  of  Mississippi, 
152.  In  North  Carolina,  981  men  were  indicted. 
In  South  Carolina,  five  of  these  culprits  were 
immediately  tried  and  convicted,  and  fifty-three 
of  them  pleaded  guilty.  At  the  next  term  others 
were  tried,  and  many  more  pleaded  guilty.  In 
the  other  States  the  Courts  are  at  work  meting 
out  justice.  These  are  the  offenders  in  whose 
behalf  Wade  Hampton  and  others  raised  money 
arid  employed  counsel. 

Reverdy  Johnson  and  Henry  Stanbery  were 
the  counsel,  and  I  read  a  passage  from  Mr. 
Johnson's  argument  to  the  jury  : 

But  Mr.  Attorney-General  has  remarked,  and  would 
have  you  suppose,  that  my  friend  and  myself  are  here  to 
defend,  to  justify,  or  to  palliate  the  outrages  that  may 
have  been  perpetrated  in  your  State  by  this  association 
of  Ku-klux.  H  e  makes  a  great  mistake  as  to  both  of  us.  I 
have  listened  with  unmixed  horror  to  some  of  the  testi 
mony  which  has  been  brought  before  you.  The  outrages 
proved  are  shocking  to  hum  inity  ;  they  admit  of  neither 
excuse  nor  justification  ;  they  violate  every  obligation 
which  law  and  nature  impose  upon  man  ;  they  show  that 
the  parties  engaged  were  brutes,  insensible  to  the  obliga 
tion  of  humanity  and  religion. 

The  action  of  Congress  and  the  President  has 
put  an  end  to  much  of  this  bloody  business ; 
but  stopping  murder  is  called  "  centralism,"  and 
we  ar«  being  stoned  for  that. 

SOUTHERN    STATE   GOVERNMENTS — AMNESTY. 

The  South  has  been  for  years  a  fertile  field 
for  electioneering  sensations.  The  State  Gov 
ernments  in  some  of  the  Southern  States  have 
been  weak  and  bad,  and  the  "  Liberals  "  want 
to  try  us  for  that.  What  have  we  to  do  with 
it  ?  Why,  they  say  we  irnposed  political  disa 
bilities  on  the  rebels.  Who  imposed  political 
disabilities  on  rebels  ?  We  are  told  the  people 
pay  the  debt,  but  we  never  hear  that  the  peo 
ple  imposed  the  disabilities  ;  yet  they  did.  The 
Fourteenth  Amendment  of  the  Constitution, 
ratified  by  the  Legislatures  of  three-quarters  of 
the  States,  is  the  disability  under  which  rebels 
have  been.  That  amendment  does  not  touch 
the  right  to  vote,  but  leaves  every  rebel  a  voter. 
It  touches  only  the  right  to  hold  office.  It  pro 


vides  that  the  men  who  took  an  oath  to  support 
the  Constitution,  and  then  fought  against  it, 
thus  adding  perjury  to  treason,  shall  not  hold 
office  ;  and  it  further  provides  that  Congress, 
by  a  two-third  vote,  may  relieve  them.  It  is 
foolish  to  pretend,  all  being  allowed  to  vote, 
that  the  majority  could  not  rule  ;  it  is  absurd  to 
pretend  that  the  few  rebels,  who  are  perjured 
as  well  as  traitors,  were  the  only  fit  men  to 
elect  State  officers  and  legislators.  It  follows 
that  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  is  not  the  cause 
of  bad  men  being  elected  to  office  in  the  Southern 
States.  The  truth  is,  as  was  abundantly  proved 
before  the  Ku-Klux  Committee,  that  capable, 
educated  men,  eligible  to  office,  refused  to  ac 
cept  it,  and  refused  to  vote,  and  persuaded  the 
rebels  generally  not  to  vote,  all  for  the  purpose 
of  frustrating  reconstruction  in  the  South,  and 
making  it  odious. 

Amnesty  or  want  of  amnesty  had  nothing  to 
do  with  jobs  in  Southern  Legislatures,  any 
more  than  in  our  own.  No  man  has  ever  asked 
to  be  relieved  who  has  not  been  relieved  prompt 
ly  ;  indeed,  history  has  no  instance  of  such  for 
bearance  and  mercy  as  has  been  granted  to  the 
ringleaders  of  rebellion. 

Not  one  was  ever  visited  with  the  least  pen 
alty,  except  being  barred  from  office,  for  com 
mitting  perjury  as  well  as  treason,  and  bills  for 
relief  began  at  once,  and  all  who  asked  soon  re 
ceived  forgiveness.  Whether  a  general  act,  nam 
ing  no  one,  but  covering  rebels  in  a  body,  was  a 
compliance  with  the  Fourteenth  Amendment, 
may  well  be  doubted  ;  be  this  as  it  may,  the 
President  recommended,  and  Congress  on  the 
2  ist  of  last  May  adopted,  such  an  act.  It  would 
have  passed  weeks  earlier,  but  that  "Liberals" 
who  pretended  to  be  for  a  "Civil  Rights  bill  " 
by  itself,  voted  avowedly  to  make  it  as  obnoxious 
as  possible,  and  then,  when  it  became  part  of 
the  Amnesty  bill,  some  of  them  voted  against  it 
and  others  dodged — and  this  when  two  votes 
would  have  carried  it.  And  now,  when  not 
more  than  one  or  two  hundred  men  in  the  whole 
South  are  left  ineligible  to  office,  and  these  are 
men  who  still  defy  and  spurn  the  Constitution, 
we  are  gravely  told  that  "amnesty  "  is  a  great 
issue  before  the  American  people. 

Amnesty,  as  an  issue,  is  as  dead  as  the  politi 
cians  who  prate  about  it.  It  is  about  as  vital 
as  Mr.  Sumner's  published  reason  for  supporting 
Mr.  Greeley,  namely,  that  Greeley  was  bom 
the  same  year  that  he  was  himself. 

"Peace,  good  will  toward  men,"  have  been 
for  three  years  national  watch-words.  Even  the 
old  Indian  scares  have  failed  to  bring  on  Indian 
wars,  which  were  always  contractors'  wars.  For 
the  first  time  in  our  history  an  Indian  peace  pol 
icy  has  triumphed,  massacres  have  been  prevent 
ed,  the  whites  and  the  Indians  alike  have  been 
spared,  and  millions  saved  to  the  nation. 

WHY   CHANGE?— WHO    ASKS    IT? 

Such  is  the  Administration,  and  such  the 
stable  prosperity  and  the  wholesome  condition 
of  things,  at  home  and  abroad,  which  we  are 
asked  to  trade  off  for  we  know  not  what.  To 
suppose  it  will  be  done  would  be  to  brand  free 
government  as  a  failure,  and  to  insult  the  sense 
of  the  American  people. 


The  President  and  Ills  Slanderers. 


What  is  the  change  offered  us  ?  Does  any 
body  know  ?  When  did  the  necessity  for  any 
change  arise  ?  Certainly  not  when  in  Septem 
ber,  1870,  Mr.  Greeley  called  the  Reform 
movement  "a  conspiracy  to  destroy  the  Repub 
lican  party;"  not  in  September,  1871,  when 
Mr.  Greeley  drew  resolutions  fully  endorsing 
the  present  Administration;  not  on  the  5th  of  Jan 
uary,  1871,  when  in  a  speech  Mr.  Greeley  said, 
' '  I  venture  to  suggest  that  Gen.  Grant  will  be 
far  better  qualified  for  that  momentous  trust  in 
1872  than  he  was  in  1868  ;"  not  when  in  Feb 
ruary,  1871,  Mr.  Greeley  said  that  a  defeat  of 
the  Republican  party  in  the  nation  would  be  a 
"disgrace  and  humiliation";  not  only  a  year 
ago,  when  Mr.  Greeley  said  : 

When  a  Republican  Convention,  fairly  chosen  after 
free  consultation  and  the  frank  interchange  of  opinion, 
shall  have  nominated  Republican  candidates  for  Presi 
dent  and  Vice-President,  we  shall  expect  to  urge  all  Re 
publicans  to  give  them  a  hearty,  effective  support,  whe 
ther  they  be  or  be  not  of  those  whose  eriginal  preference 
has  been  gratified. 

Not  on  the  25th  of  April,  1872,  when  Mr. 
Greeley  placed  his  hostility  to  President  Grant 
squarely  and  solely  on  the  ground  of  certain  ap 
pointments  in  the  City  of  New  York. 

Who  were  the  discoverers  of  the  need,  of  a 
change?  Who  called  the  Cincinnati  Convention  ? 
Did  the  business  men  of  the  country  call  it  ? 
Did  the  public-spirited,  the  unselfish,  and  the 
patriotic  call  it  ?  Every  one  knows  that  it  was 
the  work  of  the  political  "outs."  A  few  re 
spectable  men  were  drawn  in,  but  the  great  body 
of  the  movers  were,  as  Greeley  used  to  say  of 
the  Democrats,  "the  very  scum"  of  politics. 

Nearly  every  man  whose  name  appeared  was 
either  a  disappointed  office-seeker,  a  man  with 
a  grievance,  or  a  man  of  bad  character.  Such  a 
"reform"  movement  will  never  be  seen  again, 
unless  the  disreputable  women  of  the  laad 
should  strike  and  start  a  "liberal"  movement 
to  reform  the  virtuous  women  of  the  land. 
There  is  an  effrontery  bordering  the  sublime  in 
professional  corruptionists,  the  worst  and  most 
notorious,  starting  up  to  berate  honest  people. 
From  such  effrontery  came  a  convention,  which, 
from  beginning  to  end,  was  managed  to  cheat 
and  defraud  the  respectable  men  who  were 
drawn  into  it  and  the  public  generally.  That 
the  nomination  was  bartered  and  bellowed 
through  we  are  assured  by  the  best  who  were 
present;  and  now  the  Democratic  party  has 
died  by  its  own  hand,  and  gone  for  eternal  pun 
ishment  to  Horace  Greeley. 

MR.    GREELEY  AND   HIS    "CLAIMS." 

An  examination  of  the  fitness  of  Mr.  Greeley, 
and  his  claims  to  public  confidence,  is  the  duty 
of  every  citizen.  That  he  has  shown  great 
talent  as  an  editor  and  writer,  all  admit,  but 
nearly  all  else  claimed  for  him  now,  I  deny. 
The  very  talents  he  has  shown  unfit  him  for  the 
Presidency. 

It  is  said  that  a  great  debt  is  due  and  unpaid 
by  the  Republican  party  to  Mr.  Greeley.  The 
account  stands  very  differently,  as  most  persons 
understand  it. 

Does  not  Mr.  Greeley  owe  much  to  the  Re 
publican  party?  That  party  gave  him  wealth, 
fame  jind  influence.  His  talent  and  industry 


were  his  own;  but  the  Tribune  was  sustained 
as  a  party  organ,  and  was  made  a  mine  of 
wealth  by  the  Republican  party.  Who  does 
not  know  that  Republicans,  whether  private 
citizens  or  postmasters,  or  other  "office-holders," 
or  country  editors,  or  committee-men,  have  made 
common  cause  for  years  for  the  Tribune,  have 
organized  clubs,  pushed  and  begged  for  subscrip 
tions,  and  made  the  Tribune,  what  it  was  ? 

Who  does  not  know  that  this  year  tens  of 
thousands  of  Republicans  paid  their  money  in 
advance  for  the  Tribune,  while  yet  its  claws 
were  half  concealed,  holding  itself  out  as  a 
Republican  paper,  and  that  the  money  thus  ob 
tained  by  false  pretense  is  kept  to  sustain  the 
paper  in  its  present  gross  and  knavish  course. 
Who  does  not  know  that  the  position  given 
Mr.  Greeley  by  the  Republican  party,  did  more 
than  all  else  to  make  the  sale  of  his  book  called 
the  " 'American  Conflict"  which  is  said  to  have 
paid  him  more  than  a  hundred  thousand  dollars. 
He  sent  canvassers  to  solicit  subscribers  for  this 
book,  and  who  subscribed,  who  paid  him  a 
fortune  for  it?  Was  it  the  Democrats  or  the 
no-party  men,  or  was  it  those  to  whom  he  now 
says  "he  owes  nothing?" 

It  is  true  that  Mr.  Greeley  has  seldom  been 
intrusted  with  office,  though  he  has  long  sought 
office  from  the  Whig  and  Republican  parties. 
This,  however,  is  simply  from  want  of  confidence 
in  his  practical  judgment  and  consistency. 

Prior  to  1854,  Mr.  Greeley's  extreme  craving 
for  office  was  not  understood,  and  his  letter  to 
Gov.  Seward,  November  II,  1854,  dissolving 
the  "political  firm  of  Seward,  Weed  &  Greeley, 
because  office  had  not  been  given  him,  amazed 
the  public. 

In  this  letter,  after  referring  to  some  of  the 
offices  he  wanted  from  the  Whig  party,  and 
vipbraiding  Gov.  Seward  for  not  appointing  him 
to  some  office  in  1837,  he  says  : 

Now  came  the  great  scramble  of  the  swell-meb  of 
coon  minstrels  and  cider-suckers  at  Washington,  I  not 
being  counted  in.  Several  regiments  of  them  went  on 
from  this  city  ;  but  no  one  of  the  whole  crowd  — though 
I  say  it  who  should  not — had  done  so  much  toward  Gen. 
Harrison's  nomination  and  election  as  yours  respectfully. 
I  asked  nothing,  expected  nothing  ;  but  y<m,  Gov.  Sew- 
ard,  ought  to  have  asked  that  I  be  Postmaster  of  New 
York.  ****** 

Let  me  speak  of  the  late  canvass.  I  was  once  sent 
to  Congress  for  ninety  days,  merely  to  enable  Jim  Brooks 
to  secure  a  seat  therein  for  four  years. 

******* 

But  this  last  Spring,  after  the  Nebraska  question  had 
created  a  pew  state  of  things  at  the  North,  one  or  two 
personal  friends,  of  no  political  consideration,  suggested 
my  name  as  a  candidate  for  Governor,  and  I  did  not  dis 
courage  them. 

I  am  sure  Weed  did  not  mean  to  humiliate  me,  but  he 
did  it.  The  upshot  of  his  discourse  (very  cautiously 
stated)  was  this  :  if  I  were  a  candidate  for  Governor,  I 
should  beat  not  myself  only  but  you.  Perhaps  that  was 
true.  But,  as  I  had  in  nq  manner  solicited  his  or  your 
support,  I  thought  this  might  have  been  said  to  my  friends 
rather  than  to  me.  I  suspect  it  is  true  that  I  could  not 
have  been  elected  Governor  as  a  Whig.  But  had  he  and 
you  been  favorable,  there  -would  have  been  a  party  in 
the  State,  ere  this,  which  could  and  would  have  elected 
me  to  any  post,  without  injuring  myself  or  endangering 
your  election. 

It  was  in  vain  that  I  urged  that  I  had  in  no  manner 
asked  a  nomination.  At  length.  I  was  nettled  by  his 
language — well  intended,  but  very  cutting,  as  addressed 
by  him  to  me — to  bay,  in  substance,  "Well,  then,  make 
Patterson  Governor,  and  try  my  name  for  Lieutenant. 
To  lose  this  place  is  a  matter  of  no  importance,  and  we 
can  see  whether  I  am  really  so  odious." 


Senator  ConJcling's   Great  Speech  at  New   York. 


Having  quoted  from  the  early  letters  of  Presi 
dent  Grant,  it  seems  but  fair  that  I  should  read 
from  an  early  effusion  of  Mr.  Greeley's  also,  and 
beside,  I  want  you  to  see  how  the  keenest  men 
in  the  Whig  Party  regarded  Mr.  Greeley's  aspira 
tions  and  qualifications.  Job  once  expressed  a 
wish  that  his  "adversary  had  written  a  book"; 
— had  Mr.  Greeley  been  the  adversary  then,  a 
letter  would  have  satisfied  Job  just  as  well. 

While  he  belonged  to  the  Republican  Party, 
Mr.  Greeley  was  a  candidate  for  Governor  several 
times,  for  Senator,  for  Representative,  and  for 
other  offices  ;  always  being  defeated  in  the  nom 
ination  or  election,  except  when  once  chosen  for 
a  ninety-days  term  in  Congress,  when  made  Presi 
dential  elector  in  1864,  and  when  he  ran  for  the 
Constitutional  Convention  under  a  law  insuring 
his  election,  without  regard  to  the  number  of 
votes. 

WHAT   MR.    GREELEY   DID   WHEN    IN    OFFICE. 

The  Republican  Party  has  been  blamed  for 
not  gratifying  Mr.  Greeley's  ambition  for  office, 
but  the  mass  of  the  party,  though  appreciating 
his  eccentric  genius,  has  believed  him  erratic, 
and  not  possessed  of  the  practical  wisdom,  mod 
eration,  or  business  capacity  to  make  a  useful  or 
safe  official.  As  often  as  he  has  been  tried  in 
public  station  he  has  failed.  His  brief  career 
in  Congress  was  a  sad  fiasco  ;  he  more  than 
once  excused  his  course  by  saying  that  he  voted 
without  understanding  the  question,  and  had 
voted  as  he  did  not  mean  to.  (Congressional 
Globe,  1848-49,  vol.  20,  pp.  269,  336).  He  in 
volved  himself  in  questions  of  veracity,  which 
compelled  him  to  retreat  from  his  statements  ; 
and  on  one  occasion  was  confronted  on  the 
floor  by  members,  who  flatly  testified  to  the 
untruthfulness  of  what  he  said.  (Globe,  as 
above.)  Libels,  published  in  his  paper,  sub 
jected  him  to  indignities,  and  even  to  worse 
embarrassments. 

His  course  in  the  Constitutional  Convention 
was  a  series  of  peevish  attempts  to  assume 
everything  and  do  everything,  and  resulted  in 
his  impatiently  and  prematurely  quitting  his 
post,  after  pouring  upon  members  a  volley  of 
oaths.  Even  the  task  of  acting  as  chairman  of 
a  local  committee,  last  year,  brought  him  into 
dilemmas  and  apparent  breaches  of  his  word, 
which  a  man  of  common  discretion  would  have 
avoided. 

His  affiliations  with  men  have  shown  him  a 
poor  judge  of  human  nature,  and  the  ease  with 
which  the  designing  impose  upon  him  has  always 
excited  the  sympathy  of  his  friends.  The  worst 
men  have  stuck  to  him  and  used  him,  with  no 
more  power  on  his  part  to  shake  them  off  than 
a  ship  has  to  shake  off  its  barnacles.  His  man 
agement  of  every  business,  except  editing  a  news 
paper,  has  shown  him  wanting  in  business  capa 
city  ;  and  as  an  editor  he  has  always  lacked  a 
balance  wheel  to  keep  him  from  absurd  incon 
sistencies. 

His  investments  of  money  with  the  shiftless 
and  the  dishonest ;  his  embarking  in  ventures 
with  Tweed,  and  lending  his  name  to  men  un 
worthy  of  trust,  can  be  excused  only  on  the 
ground  of  want  of  sound  judgment.  His  Four- 
ierism,  and  Agrarianism,  attest  a  mind  given  to 


vagaries  like  this  :  on  one  occasion  he  insisted 
that  there  could  be  no  property  in  land,  because 
property  was  the  product  of  human  labor,  and 
that  land,  like  air,  belonged  to  God  Almighty, 
and  could  not  be  owned  by  man. 

Building  a  barn  where  a  man  could  not  stand, 
and  was  washed  away,  planting  turnips  where 
turnips  could  not  grow,  trying  to  substitute  cab 
bages  for  tobacco,  and  then  assuming  to  teach 
farmers  in  all  the  varying  climates  and  soils  of 
the  continent,  what  to  raise,  and  how  to  plow, 
and  when  to  hoe,  can  only  pass  as  the  grotesque 
and  harmless  antics  of  a  man  of  oddities,  nat 
tered  by  many,  and  most  of  all  by  himself. 
"  A  jack  of  all  trades  is  master  of  none,"  and 
"what  he  knows  about  farming,"  would  show 
Mr.  Greeley  a  universal  genius,  if  it  were  not 
for  what  he  could  learn  from  those  he  assumes 
to  teach. 

The  overweening  confidence  with  which  he 
holds  his  opinions,  and  the  rude  vehemence  with 
which  he  utters  them,  make  the  suddenness 
with  which  he  changes  them  the  plainest  proof 
of  insincerity  or  unsoundness  ;  while  the  epithets 
and  libels  with  which  he  pursues  those  he  hates 
or  envies,  shows  a  strangely  unchristian  and  un 
bridled  nature. 

Mr.  Greeley's  own  traits  of  character,  as  seen 
by  his  party  associates,  have  made  it  better  for 
him  and  for  the  public  that  he  should  not  hold 
office,  and  when  Andrew  Johnson  nominated 
him  after  he  bailed  Jefferson  Davis,  as  Minister 
to  Austria,  rumor  is  greatly  at  fault  if  Senators 
who  now  support  him,  even  all  those  who  then 
belonged  to  the  Republican  party,  could  be  in 
duced  to  vote  for  his  confirmation. 

Truthful  history  will  never  record  that  whea 
Horace  Greeley  deserted  the  Republican  Party 
for  a  Presidential  nomination,  he  owed  the  party 
nothing  ;  or  that  the  party  owed  him  a  great 
and  unpaid  debt ;  or  that  the  party  was  wrong 
in  not  selecting  such  a  man  for  high  public 
trusts.  The  verdict  will  be  rather  that  he  spoke 
like  a  scheming  ingrate,  when  on  the  I2th  of 
June,  1871,  he  said  to  a  street  audience,  "  I 
am  perfectly  willing  to  pass  receipts  with  the 
Republican  Party,  and  say  that  our  accounts 
are  now  settled  and  closed." 

MR.  GREELEY'S  RECORD — DID  HE  HELP  SE 
CESSION. 

Mr.  Greeley's  deeds  are  all  to  be  found  i» 
words.  His  record  has  not  been  written  for  him 
by  false  and  hostile  hands  ;  he  has  written  it 
himself.  How  far  it  is  the  record  of  a  man  fit  to 
be  trusted,  in  peace  and  possibly  war,  with  the 
affairs  of  this  great  nation,  will  appear  sufficiently 
without  going  back  of  the  rebellion. 

In  1860  Mr.  Lincoln  was  elected,  and  before 
he  was  inaugurated  seven  States  seceded  from 
the  Union.  They  did  not  secede  believing  that 
the  twenty-one  millions  of  the  North  would  de 
ny  their  right,  and  desolate  their  land  by  war. 
Common  sense  proves  that  they  relied  upon  a 
divided  sentiment  in  the  Northern  States. 

They  thought  the  Democratic  party,  in  part 
at  least,  would  maintain  their  right ;  and  they 
thought  also  with  good  reason,  that  the  Repub 
lican  party  could  not  be  brought  to  coerce  them, 
or  make  war  upon  them.  This  expectation  of 


The  President  and  His  Slanderers.    ' 


sympathy  in  the  North  while  the  Gulf  States 
were  hesitating,  turned  the  scales  in  favor  of  se 
cession  ;  and  no  man  in  all  the  land  did,  or 
could  do,  so  much  as  Horace  Greeley  to  create 
the  expectation  upon  which  secession  took  place. 
The  New  York  Tribune  was  at  that  time  the 
leading  Republican  organ,  and  beyond  and 
above  all  other  papers,  it  spoke  for  the  Repub 
lican  party.  Its  editor  claimed  the  credit  of 
having  just  overthrown  Gov.  Seward  at  Chicago, 
and  this,  for  the  time  being,  completed  its  su 
premacy  in  the  Republican  party.  Holding 
this  position  of  unchallenged  authority,  hear 
what  it  said  to  men  not  yet  daring  to  plunge  into 
the  Red  Sea  of  Revolution. 

The  election  returns  in  1860  had  not  come 
in  when  the  Tribu)i<;  began  to  incite  secession. 
On  the  Qth  of  November,  1860,  Horace  Greeley 
published  this  editorial  : 

And  now,  if  the  Cotton  States  consider  the  value  of 
the  Union  debatable,  we  maintain  their  perfect  right  to 
discuss  it.  Nay,  we  hold  with  Jefferson  to  the  inalien 
able  right  of  communities  to  alter  or  abolish  forms  of 
government  that  have  become  oppressive  or  injurious  ; 
and  if  the  Cotton  States  shall  decide  that  they  can  do 
better  out  of  the  Union  than  in  it,  we  insist  on  letting 
them  go  in  peace.  The  right  to  secede  may  be  a  revo 
lutionary  one,  but  it  exists  nevertheless  ;  and  we  do  not 
see  how  one  party  can  have  a  right  to  do  what  another 
party  has  a  right  to  prevent.  We  must  ever  resist  the 
asserted  right  of  any  State  to  remain  in  the  Union,  and 
nullify  or  defy  the  laws  thereof  :  to  withdraw  from  the 
Union  is  quite  another  matter.  And,  whenever  a  con 
siderable  section  of  our  Union  shall  deliberately  resolve 
to  go. out,  we  shall  resist  all  coercive  measures  designed 
to  keep  it  in.  We  hope  never  to  live  in  a  Republic 
whereof  one  section  is  pinned  to  the  residue  by  bayonets. 

On  the  i  yth  of  December,  1860,  just  before 
South  Carolina  seceded,  South  Carolina  being 
the  first  State  to  go,  Mr.  Greeley  published  the 
following  editorial  : 

_  We  have  repeatedly  asked  those  who  dissent  from  our 
views  of  this  matter  to  tell  us  frankly  whether  they  do  or 
do  not  assent  to  Mr.  Jefferson's  statement  in  the  De 
claration  of  Independence  that  Governments  "derive 
their  just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the  governed  ;  and 
that  whenever  any  form  of  government  becomes  destruc 
tive  of  these  ends,  it  is  the  right  of  the  people  to  alter  or 
abolish  it,  and  to  institute  a  new  government,"  &c. ,  &c. 
We  do  heartily  accept  this  doctrine,  believing  it  intrins 
ically  sound,  beneficent,  and  one  that,  universally  ac 
cepted,  is  calculated  to  prevent  the  shedding  of  seas  of 
human  blood.  And  if-  it  justified  the  secession  from  the 
British  Empire  of  three  millions  of  colonists  in  1776,  we 
do  not  see  why  it  would  not  justify  the  secession  of 
five  millions  of  Southrons  from  the  Federal  Union  in 
1861.  If  we  are  mistaken  on  this  point,  why  does  not 
some  one  attempt  to  show  wherein  and  why  ?  For  our 
own  part,  while  we  deny  the  right  of  slave-holders  to 
hold  slaves  against  the  will  of  the  latter,  we  cannot  see 
how  twenty  millions  of  people  can  rightfully  hold  ten  or 
even  five,  in  a  detested  Union  with  them  by  military 
force. 

****** 

We  could  not  stand  up  for  coercion,  for  subjugation, 
for  we  do  not  think  it  would  be  just.  We  hold  the  right 
of  self-government  sacred,  even  when  evoked  in  behalf 
of  those  who  deny  it  to  others.  So  much  for  the  ques 
tion  of  principle. 

*  *  *  *  * 

We  fully  realize  that  the  dilemma  of  the  incoming  Ad 
ministration  will  be  a  critical  one.  1 1  must  endeavor  to  up 
hold  and  enforce  the  laws  as  well  against  rebellious  slave 
holders  as  fugitive  slaves.  The  new  President  must  fulfil  the 
obligations  assumed  in  his  inauguration  oath,  no  matter 
how  shamefully  his  predecessor  may  have  defied  them.  We 
fear  that  Southern  madness  may  precipitate  a  bloody 
collision  that  all  must  deplore.  But  if  ever  "seven  or 
eight  States"  send  agents  to  Washington  to  say,  "We 
want  to  go  out  of  the  Union,"  we  shall  feel  constrained 
by  devotion  to  human  liberty  to  say,  let  them  go  !  And 
we  do  not  see  how  we  could  take  the  other  side,  without 


coming  in  direct  conflict  with  those  rights  of  man  which 
we  hold  paramount  to  all  political  arrangements,  how 
ever  convenient  and  advantageous. 

On  the  24*  of  December,  1860,  Mr.  Greeley 
published  the  following  editorial  : 

Most  certainly  we  believe  that  Governments  are  made 
for  peoples,  not  peoples  for  Governments — that  the  "  lat 
ter  derive  their  just  power  from  the  consent  of  the  gov 
erned  :"  and  whenever  a  portion  of  this  Union,  large 
enough  to  form  an  independent,  self-subsisting  nation, 
shall  see  fit  to  say  authentically  to  the  residue,  "We 
want  to  get  away  from  you,"  \VE  SHALL  SAY — AND  WE 

TRUST  SELF-RESPECT,  IF  NOT  REGARD  FOR  THE 
PRINCIPLE  OF  SELF-GOVKRNMENT,  WILL  CONSTRAIN 
THE  RESIDUE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE  TO  SAY — 

"GO  !"  We  never  yet  had  so  poor  an  opinion  of  our 
selves  or  our  neighbors  as  to  wish  to  hold  Others  in  a 
hated  connection  with  us. 

Two  months  later,  Feb.  23,  1861,  five  days 
after  the  inauguration  of  Jeff.  Davis  as  Presi 
dent,  Mr.  Greeley  published  the  following 
editorial : 

We  have  repeatedly  said,  and  we  once  more  insist,  that 
the  great  principle  embodied  by  JEFFERSON  in  the  Dec 
laration  of  American  Independence,  that  Governments 
derive  their  just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the  governed, 
is  sound  and  just  ;  AND  THAT  IF  THE  SLAVE  STATES, 

THE  COTTON  STATES,  OR  THE  GULF  STATES  ONLY, 
CHOOSE  TO  FORM  AN  INDEPENDENT  NATION  THEY 
HAVE  A  CLEAR  MORAL  RIGHT  TO  DO  SO.  \Ve  have 

said,  and  still  maintain,  that,  provided  the  Cotton  States 
have  fully  and  definitely  made  up  their  minds  to  go  by 
themselves,  THERE  is  NO  NEED  OF  FIGHTING  ABOUT 
IT  ;  for  they  have  only  to  exercise  reasonable  patience, 
and  they  will  be  let  off  in  peace  and  goodwill.  When- 
mer  it  sJuill  be  clear  that  the  great  body  of  Southern 
people  have  become  conclusively  alienated  from  the 
Union,  and  anxious  to  escape  from  it,  WE  WILL  DO  OUR 

BEST   TO   FORWARD   THEIR   VIEWS. 

Are  not  these  manifestoes  sickening  when  we 
remember  the  furious  cries  of  war  by  which 
they  were  followed  ?  Can  any  man  doubt  the 
great  part  they  played  in  fomenting  secession 
and  stimulating  rebellion?  When  Alexander 
H.  Stephens,  in  the  Georgia  Convention,  which 
passed  the  ordiuance  of  secession,  attempted  to 
stem  the  secession  tide,  Robert  Toombs  put 
him  down,  and  carried  the  Convention,  by 
reading  these  Tribune  articles.  Union  men  who 
resisted  secession  were  silenced  throughout  the 
South  by  these  and  similar  quotations  from  Mr. 
Greeley ;  the  Tribune  became  the  hand-book 
to  "lire  the  Southern  heart." 

FRANK  BLAIR'S  TESTIMONY  AGAINST  MR. 

GREELEY. 

I  do  not  ask  Democrats  to  take  my  word  for 
this  ;  let  me  call  their  last  candidate  for  Vice- 
President  to  the  stand,  and  make  him  testify. 
Here  is  what  Gen.  Frank  P.  Blair  said  in  the 
Senate,  February  17,  1871,  when  explaining 
how  secession  gained  the  upper  hand  in  the 
South  : 

We  all  know  the  instance  of  a  very  distinguished  man, 
Alexander  H.  Stephens.  We  all  know  that,  as  a  mem 
ber  of  the  Georgia  Convention,  he  contended  with 
eloquence  and  ability  in  favor  of  the  Government  of  the 
United  States  ;  and  1  have  been  informed  that  the  only  re 
ply  which  was  made  to  that  eloquent  appeal  of  his  to 
support  the  Government  was  the  reading,  by  Mr. 
Toombs,  of  a  paragraph  from  ;he  New  York  Tribune,  in 
which  it  was  declared  that  if  the  Southern  people  chose 
to  secede  they  had  as  much  right  to  separate  themselves 
from  the  Northern  States  as  our  ancestors  had  in  1776  to 
separate  themselves  from  the  mother  country. 

That  paragraph  did  appear  in  the  Tribune,  and  every 
Senator  here  will  bear  it  in  his  recollection.  I  remember 
to  have  seen  it,  and  I  remember  the  discouragement 
which  fell  upon  us  in  Missouri  and  throughout  the  other 


Senator  ConUin^s  Great  Speech  at  New    York. 


Southern  States  where  Union  men  were  attempting  to 
band  themselves  together  and  to  maintain  the  Govern 
ment,  when  it  was  announced  by  that  paper,  a  leading 
paper  in  the  Republican  party  at  that  time,  that  the  Se 
cessionists  had  as  much  right  to  separate  themselves 
from  the  Northern  States  as  had  our  ancestors  in  1776  to 
abandon  the  mother  country. 

I  remark  upon  the  case  of  Mr.  Stephens,  who  was  a 
zealous  friend  of  the  Union,  who  spoke  in  the  Georgia 
Convention  ably  and  eloquently  against  the  secession  of 
his  State,  and  who  was  responded  to  in  that  Convention 
simply  by  the  reading  of  a  paragraph  from  the  New  York 
Tribune,  which  -was  as  much  as  to  say  that  they  had 
nothing  to  apprehend  from  tlie  North  if  they  decided  to 
go  out  of  the  Union,  because  here  was  one  of  the  leaders 
of  the  Republican  party  of  t/ie  North  announcing  to 
them  that  if  they  desired  to  gJ  out  they  could  do  so,  and 
had  as  much  right  to  do  so  as  our  forefathers  had  to 
separate  themselves  from  the  mother  country. 

Mr.  HOWARD — May  I  ask  the  Senator  from  Missouri 
whether,  in  his  opinion,  the  paragraph  in  the  New  York 
Tribune  to  which  he  refers  was  a  justification,  in  whole 
w  in  part,  for  the  treason  of  Mr.  Stephens? 

Mr.  BLAIR — I  will  reply  that  I  do  not  consider  that 
anything  justifies  treason,  and  I  do  not  think  the  conduct 
of  the  Secessionists  of  the  South/' ustified  that  traitorous 
expression  of  opinion  on  the  part  of  the  Tribune,  for  I 
regard  it  as  traitorous.  I  say,  Sir,  that  it  did  as  much 
to  discourage  the  efforts  of  the  Union  men  in  the  South 
as  anything  that  occurred  at  that  period.  It  was  simply 
a  declaration  which  those  accepted,  I  suppose,  and  were 
glad  to  accept,  who  wished  to  rid  themselves  of  the 
Union,  that  they  might  go  out  in  peace,  that  they  would 
not  be  pursued,  that  war  would  not  follow  their  step  ;  and 
this  did  a  great  deal  to  prevent  resistance  on  the  part  of  the 
Union  men  at  the  South  at  the  time  to  the  establishment 
of  the  de  facto  Government  to  which  they  were  subjected. 
— Congressional  Globe,  Part  2,  3d  Session  4ist  Congress  ; 
pp.  i, 24},  1,345. 

These  statements,  made  by  Gen.  Blair,  created 
some  sensation.  The  Tribune  tried  to  break 
their  force,  and  on  the  2Oth  of  February,  1871, 
Gen.  Blair  returned  to  the  charge  prepared  with 
proof.  Here  is  what  he  said  : 

When  speaking  on  this  subject  the  other  day,  I  gave 
from  memory  certain  deductions  of  the  New  York  Tri 
bune,  then  as  now  the  most  influential  organ  of  public 
opinion  in  the  Republican  party  in  this  country,  and 
spoke  of  the  unhappy  influence  of  this  paper  at  that 
time,  in  giving  encouragement  to  the  Secessionists  and 
in  discouraging  the  efforts  of  the  Union  men  in  the 
South.  ***** 

I  now  quote  the  extracts  from  that  paper  to  which  I 
referred,  and  the  Senate  and  the  country  can  judge 
whether  my  statement  or  that  of  the  Senator  is  the  cor 
rect  one.  On  the  gth  of  November,  1860,  the  New  York 
Tribune  said  : 

[Here  he  read  some  of  the  articles  already 
quoted,  and  resumed  :] 

Mr.  Stephens,  of  Georgia,  and  many  others  who  have 
since  been  disfranchised,  breasted  the  storm  with  heroic 
courage.  Regardless  of  popularity,  and  thinking  only  of 
the  peace  and  happiness  of  the  country,  they  struggled 
against  secession,  and  warned  the  people  of  the  disaster 
they  would  encounter.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Greeley 
assured  them  these  dangers  were  all  imaginary,  and  in 
sisted  that  "they  should  go  in  peace,"  that  they  had  a 
clear  "  moral  right  to  go." 

*  *  *  *  *  * 

Words  were  never  uttered  more  fatal  than  these  to  the 
peace  of  the  country.  Mr.  Stephens  was  defeated  in  tiks 
effort  to  prevent  secession  in  Georgia  by  a  few  votes  only, 
and  nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  these  were  obtained 
by  Mr.  Greeley's  declaration  that  secession  was  rightful 
and  would  be  peaceable.  I  have  been  informed  that 
these  declarations  were  read  in  the  Georgia  Convention 
as  a  full  reply  to  the  warnings  of  Mr.  Stephens.  The 
refusal  of  Georgia  would  undoubtedly  have  arrested  the 
movement.  Who,  then,  is  more  directly  responsible  than 
Mr.  Greeley,  and  those  who  acted  with  him  at  the 
North,  for  the  blood  which  has  drenched  this  land  ;  and 
who  is  more  directly  responsible  than  Mr.  Greeley  for  the 
vindictive  spirit  which  animates  the  dominant  party  in 
the  proscription  which  has  pursued  and  is  still  pursuing 
the  whole  people  of  the  South  ? 

Nor  was  Mr.  Greeley's  reiterated  advice  the  result  of 


an  honest  error.  No  man  understood  better  than  he 
did  the  use  that  would  be  made  of  his  declarations,  and 
how  effective  they  would  be  in  promoting  disunion. 

The  editor  of  the  Tribune  co-operated  with  the  seces 
sion  movement,  not  because  he  sympathised  with  the  ob 
jects  of  its  authors,  but  because  he  and  those  for  whom 
he  spoke  preferred  parting  with  the  South  to  partnership 
and  equality  under  the  Constitution. — Congressional 
Globe,  same  volume  ;  pp.  1,426,  1,427. 

Whoever  reads  Mr.  Greeley's  utterances,  now 
in  question,  will  see  that  he  assumed  to  give 
advice  in  a  supreme  public  emergency  ;  that  at 
the  critical  and  vital  point,  which  must  decide 
between  union  and  disunion,  between  peace"  and 
war,  Mr.  Greeley  threw  his  whole  weight  and 
influence  on  the  fatal  side.  He  upheld  the  full 
right  of  secession  ;  he  denied  the  whole  right 
of  coercion  ;  he  insisted  that  slaves  fleeing  from 
masters  in  arms  against  the  Government  must 
be  captured  and  returned  ;  and  he  protested 
against  the  continuance  of  the  Union,  after 
force  was  needed  to  preserve  it. 

MR.    GREELEY   ORGANIZES   VICTORY. 

Advancing  to  the  next  step  in  Mr.  Greeley's 
career,  we  find  him  on  the  war-path. 

Mr.  Lincoln  had  called  for  troops,  and  youths 
untrained  and  untaught  in  war,  and  unseasoned 
to  hardships,  flocked  to  Washington.  General 
Scott,  then  the  oldest  and  foremost  soldier  of 
the  Republic,  was  in  command.  He  had  around 
him  all  the  men  whom  the  nation  had  educated 
as  soldiers,  except  those  who  forsook  the  flag, 
and  in  the  judgment  of  them  all,  time  was  need 
ed  to  drill  men  and  horses,  before  ventur 
ing  an  onward  movement  upon  an  entrenched 
and  fortified  foe.  Mr.  Greeley,  an  editor,  who 
had  never  seen  a  battle,  or  studied  a  campaign, 
or  learned  anything  of  war,  assumed  the  office 
of  dictator.  With  his  great  engine,  the  Tribune, 
he  fanned  the  flame  of  popular  impatience  and 
overbore  the  authority  and  the  judgment  of 
military  men  by  a  hurricane  of  clamor  for  an 
instant  movement.  "On  to  Richmond!"  daily 
clanged  out  with  great  shocks  of  sound  from  the 
Tribune,  and  drove  the  army  headlong  to  Bull 
Run. 

Men  who  had  not  learned  to  limber  or  unlim- 
ber  guns,  and  horses  unbroken  to  manoeuvre 
artillery,  were  driven  pell  mell  upon  the  masked 
battery  of  the  rebels.  James  S.  Wadsworth 
had  gathered  up  many  of  these  green  horses,  on 
the  spur  of  the  occasion,  and  paid  for  them 
himself.  Wadsworth  went  with  them  to  the 
fated  field,  and  there,  bareheaded,  with  his 
white  locks  streaming  in  the  winds,  tried  by 
heroic  daring  to  supply  the  want  of  drill.  But 
patriotism,  and  bravery,  and  dash,  would  not 
avail;  the  attack  was  premature — "some  one 
had  blundered" — a  meddler  had  blundered,  and 
had  wrecked  an  army. 

"On  to  Richmond  "was  the  incarnation  of 
conceit  and  folly,  as  it  was  the  slogan  of  head 
long  war  ;  and  yet  it  was  the  shout  of  the  same 
man  who,  a  few  short  weeks  before,  by  the  cry 
of  secession  and  of  anti-coercion,  had  lured  and 
bated  millions  with  mad  hopes  and  promises. 

Let  me  read  you  the  motto  flung  out  by  the 
Tribune]\Ay  1st,  2d,  3d,  and  4th,  the  order  for  Bull 
Run  : 

THF  NATION'S  WAR-CRY  !  Forward  to  Richmond  ! 
Forward  to  Richmond  !  The  Rebel  Congress  must  not 


The  President  and  His  Slanderers. 


be  allowed  to  meet  there  on  the  zoth  of  July  !  BY  THAT 
DATE  THE  PLACE  MUST  BE  HELD  BY  THE  NATIONAL 
ARMY. 

On  the  ist  of  July,  twenty  days  before  Bull 
Run,  Mr.  Greeley  cast  upon  Gen.  Scott  the  im 
putation  of  treason  to  his  flag,  in  these  words  : 

"Did  you  pretend  to  know  more  about  military  matters 
than  General  Scott?"  asked  a  few  knaves,  whom  a  great 
many  simpletons  know  no  better  than  to  echo. 

"No,  sir!  we  know  very  little  of -the  art  of  war, 
and  Gen.  Scott  knows  a  great  deal.  There  is  no  ques 
tion  on  this  point  and  never  has  been." 

The  real  question — which  the  above  is  asked  only  to 
shuffle  out  of  sight— is  this  :  Does  Gen.  Scott  (or  whoever 
it  may  be)  contemplate  the  same  ends,  and  is  he  ani 
mated  by  like  impulses  and  purposes  with  the  great 
body  of  the  loyal,  liberty-loving  people  of  this  country  ? 
Does  he  stand  up  square  on  the  line  of  54  deg.  40  min., 
or  is  he  squinting  towards  36  deg.  30  min.  ?  Does  he 
want  the  rebels  routed,  or  would  he  prefer  to  have  them 
conciliated  ?  When  you  answer  these  questions,  you 
touch  the  marrow  of  the  problem,  which  all  the  gas  about 
Gen.  Scott's  military  knowledge  and  our  want  of  it  is  in 
tended  to  dodge. 

ATTEMPTS    TO    SHIFT  BLAME  TO  OTHERS. 

When  tidings  came  of  the  defeat  and  carnage 
at  Bull  Run,  Mr.  Greeley  sank  under  the  weight 
of  his  fearful  responsibility.  The  first  symptom 
of  recovering  his  self-possession  was  a  frothy 
effort  to  lay  the  blame  at  the  door  of  others. 
On  the  23d  of  July,  two  days  after  the 
battle,  he  said  : 

We  have  fought  and  been  beaten.  God  forgive  our 
rulers  that  this  is  so,  but  it  is  true,  and  cannot  be  dis 
guised.  The  Cabinet,  recently  expressing  in  rhetoric 
better  adapted  to  a  love-letter,  a  fear  of  being  drowned 
in  its  own  honey,  is  now  nearly  drowned  in  gore;  while 
our  honor  on  the  high  seas  has  only  been  saved  by  one 
daring  and  desperate  negro,  and  he  belonging  to  the 
merchant  marine.  The  "sacred  soil"  of  Virginia  is 
crimson  and  wet  with  the  blood  of  thousands  of  Northern 
men,  needlessly  shed.  The  great  and  universal  question 
pervading  the  public  mind  is  :  "  Shall  this  condition  of 
things  continue  ?" 

A  decimited  and  indignant  people  will  demand  the 
immediate  retirement  of  the  present  Cabinet  from  the 
high  places  of  power,  which,  for  one  reason  or  another, 
they  have  shown  themselves  incompetent  to  fill.  Give 
us  for  the  President  capable  advisers,  who  comprehend 
the  requirements  of  the  crisis,  and  are  equal  to  them ; 
and  for  the  army,  leaders  worthy  of  the  rank  and  file, 
and  our  banner,  now  drooping,  will  soon  float  once  more 
in  triumph  over  the  whole  land.  With  the  right  men  to 
lead,  our  people  will  show  themselves  unconquerable. 

Caught  and  impaled  in  this  attempt  to  roll 
his  own  guilt  upon  the  shoulders  of  others,  here 
is  his  next  explanation.  Observe  how,  on  the 
2yth  of  July,  he  coddles  up  to  Gen.  Scott,  whom 
he  had  tried  to  dishonor  less  than  four  weeks 
before  : 

We  have  confessed  our  own  terrible  mistake  in  the 
premises,  and  are  trying  to  amend  it.  Gen.  Scott  has 
been  equally  ingenuous  and  candid.  "  It  was  a  miscal 
culation  of  forces,"  he  says  of  the  recent  disaster.  That 
is  the  real  truth.  None  of  us  had  any  idea  of  the  im 
mense  numbers  and  tremendous  enginery  of  war  that  the 
rebels  had  silently  collected  around  their  position  at 
Manassas  Junction.  Whoever  ordered  or  planned  the 
attack  on  that  position  was  utterly  unaware  of  their 
strength. 

See  again,  how,  eighteen  months  later,  he 
sought  in  another  way  to  lay  the  ghost  of  Bull 
Run  : 

I  did  urge  that  the  great  Union  Army,  rotting  in  idle 
ness  and  debauchery  about  Washington,  should  advance 
upon  the  rebellion  it  was  called  put  to  put  down.  It 
ought  to  have  done  so  a  month  earlier  than  it  did — not  a 
part  of  it,  but  the  whole,  and  it  might  have  been  tri 
umphantly  in  Richmond,  and  the  rebellion  half  sup 
pressed  before  the  day  of  Bull  Run.  How  needless, 


how  wanton,  was  that  disaster — how  disgraceful  to  those 
who  might  and  should  have  prevented  it,  history  will 
establish.  —  Tribune,  Feb.  2,  1863. 

This  is  not  all  of  this  lamentable  record — it 
contains  yet  other  pitiable  things,  but  these 
will  do. 

It  was  in  the  agony  of  a  later  hour,  tortured 
by  dire  meddling  again,  that  Lincoln  is  said 
to  have  exclaimed,  "What  will  quiet  Horace 
Greeley,  he  gives  me  more  distress,  and  does 
the  country  more  harm  than  Jefferson  Davis." 

How  Mr.  Greeley's  interference  tortured  Mr. 
Lincoln,  may  be  gathered  from  a  letter  written 
by  Mr.  Lincoln,  Aug.  22,  1862.  Here  it  is: 

HON.  HORACE  GREELEY. — Dear  Sir  :  I  have  just 
read  yours  of  tbe  igth  inst.,  addressed  to  myself  through 
the  New  York  Tribune.  If  there  be  in  it  any  state 
ments  or  assumptions  of  fact  which  I  may  know  to  be 
erroneous,  I  do  not  now  and  here  controvert  them.  If 
there  be  any  inferences  which  I  may  believe  to  be  falsely 
drawn,  I  do  not  now  and  here  argue  against  them.  If 
there  be  perceptible  in  it  an  impatient  and  dictatorial 
tone,  I  waive  it  in  deference  to  an  old  friend  whose  heart 
I  have  always  supposed  to  be  right.  As  to  the  policy  I 
"  seem  to  be  pursuing,"  as  you  say,  I  have  not  meant  to 
leave  any  one  in  doubt.  .  *  *  * 

NIAGARA    FALLS    "PEACE    NEGOTIATIONS." 

Mr.  Greeley,  early  in  Mr.  Lincoln's  Admin 
istration,  became  his  enemy.  This  Mr.  Lin 
coln  knew  and  was  ever  on  his  guard.  This  is 
noticeable  in  the  Niagara  Falls  peace  affair. 
Mr.  Greeley  had  been  for  secession  when  seces 
sion  might  have  been  avoided,  he  had  been  for 
battle  when  the  time  had  not  come,  he  had 
been  in  turn  for  war  and  peace  when  each  was 
impossible,  and  early  in  1864,  when  the  rebel 
lion  was  about  to  collapse,  and  when  everything 
depended  upon  keeping  the  North  erect  with 
united  and  undaunted  front,  Mr.  Greeley  fell 
into  a  swoon  of  despondency  and  blamed  our 
authorities  for  not  trying  to  make  peace. 

From  the  beginning  of  the  war,  Canada  has 
been  the  refuge  of  the  spies,  detectives,  and 
hangers-on  of  the  rebellion.  On  the  5th  of 
July,  1864,  one  W.  Cornell  Jewett,  an  irre 
sponsible  and  half  insane  adventurer,  wrote  Mr. 
Greeley  a  letter,  saying  that  Geo.  N.  Sanders 
wanted  him  to  come  to  Niagara  Falls  and  hold 
a  private  interview  with  those  authorized  to 
make  peace.  Mr.  Greeley,  the  day  after  he  re 
ceived  the  letter,  wrote  to  Mr.  Lincoln.  His 
letter  shows  him  full  of  the  subject,  and  com 
pletely  persuaded  that  he  had  received  a  great 
and  genuine  revelation.  He  inclosed,  ready- 
made,  his  "plan  of  adjustment."  He  was  go 
ing  to  wind  up  the  whole  rebellion  by  paying 
$400, 000,000  to  the  slave  States,  "loyal  and  seces 
sion  alike"  for  slaves,  and  by  several  other  things, 
closing  his  plan  with  these  words :  "It  may  save 
us  from  a  Northern  insurrection."  In  his  letter  he 
said:  "A  wide-spread  conviction  that  the  Gov 
ernment  and  its  prominent  supporters  are  not 
anxious  for  peace,  and  do  not  improve  proffered 
opportunities  to  achieve  it,  is  doing  great  harm 
now,  and  is  morally  certain,  unless  removed,  to 
do  far  greater  in  the  approaching  elections." 
He  also  put  in  his  letter  exaggerated  statements 
of  the  extremity  to  which  the  country  had  come, 
and  appealed  to  Mr.  Lincoln  to  enter  into  the 
negotiation. 

Mr.  Lincoln  saw  through  the  whole  thing  at 


Senator  Conkling^s  Great  Speech  at  New   York. 


a  glance  ;  he  saw  that  Mr.  Greeley  had  been 
gulled,  and  he  saw  that  he  must  humor  him  or 
rouse  his  ire.  Accordingly  he  wrote  to  him  as 
follows  :  '"If  you  find  any  person,  anywhere, 
professing  to  have  any  proposition  of  Jefferson 
Davis,  in  writing,  for  peace,  embracing  the  res 
toration  of  the  Union  and  the  abandonment  of 
slavery,  whatever  else  it  embraces,  say  to  him  he 
may  come  to  me  with  you,"  etc.  Mr.  Greeley 
replied,  caviling  with  the  President's  letter,  say 
ing  that  they  would  not  show  their  credentials, 
etc.,  and  using  these  words  :  "Green  as  I  may 
be,  I  am  not  quite  so  verdant  as  to  imagine  any 
thing  of  the  sort." 

Receiving  no  answer  from  the  President,  three 
days  afterward,  July  13,  he  wrote:  "I  have 
now  information  on  which  I  can  rely,  that  two 
persons  duly  commissioned,  and  empowered  to 
negotiate  for  peace,  are,  at  this  moment,  not  far 
from  Niagara  Falls,"  etc.  In  this  letter  he  ap 
peals  to  Mr.  Lincoln  "to  act  in  the  premises, 
and  to  act  so  promptly  that  a  good  influence  may 
even  yet  be  exerted  in  the  North  Carolina  elec 
tion  next  month." 

Mr.  Lincoln  replied,  "I  am  disappointed 
that  you  have  not  already  reached  here  with 
those  Commissioners.  If  they  would  consent  to 
come  on  being  shown  my  letter  to  you  on  the 
9th  inst.,  show  that  and  this  to  them,  and  if 
they  will  come  on  the  terms  stated  in  the  former, 
bring  them.  I  not  only  intend  a  sincere  effort 
for  peace,  but  I  intend  that  you  shall  be  a  per 
sonal  witness  that  it  is  made. " 

Mr.  Greeley  applied  for  "safe  conduct"  for 
four  persons,  and  this  being  granted,  he  set  sail 
on  his  mission,  never^  suspecting  he  was  the 
victim  of  a  fraud,  and  nq£  seeing  how  Mr.  Lincoln 
regarded  it.  n< 

HOW    MR.    LINCOLN'  VAS   FALSELY   PLACED. 

Reaching  Niagara^  i*e  instantly  put  himself 
into  communication  *nth  Sanders,  Thompson  & 
Co.,  who  at  once  informed  him  that  they  had  no 
authority  whatever  to  make  peace,  or  to  talk 
about  it,  but  they  were  pleased  that  the  United 
States  had  at  last  come  forward  proposing  terms; 
and  they  graciously  offered  Mr.  Greeley,  if  the 
President  would  protect  them,  to  go  through  the 
United  States  down  to  Richmond,  and  see  what 
the  rebels  would  do  about  it.  Mr.  Greeley,  in 
place  of  denouncing  the  cheat  and  repelling  the 
impertinence,  and  clearing  the  President's  skirts 
by  showing  the  two  letters  which  he  had  been 
instructed  to  show,  went  into  a  correspondence 
with  these  brazen  impostors.  Learning  what 
was  going  on,  Mr.  Lincoln  dispatched  a  confi 
dential  messenger  post  haste  with  a  document 
dated  July  1 8,  1864,  signed  by  himself  and  ad 
dressed  ' '  To  whom  it  may  concern. "  This  doc 
ument  stated  that  authorized  propositions  of 
peace  would  be  fairly  met,  provided  "the  integ 
rity  of  the  whole  Union  and  the  abandonment 
of  slavery"  was  embraced.  The  messenger,  by 
order  of  the  President,  hastened  to  Niagara  Falls, 
and,  taking  Mr.  Greeley  with  him,  crossed  the 
river,  and  delivered  the  paper  in  his  presence  to 
the  rebel  tricksters. 

It  contained  exactly  what  the  President  di 
rected  Mr.  Greeley  to  show  them  in  the  first  in 


stance,  yet  it  was  the  first  notice  given  them  of 
the  President'sv^equirements. 
-  Taking  advantage  of  this  concealment  by  Mr. 
Greeley,  Thompson  &  Co.  pretended  to  be  taken 
by  surprise,  and  wrote  Mr.  Greeley  a  long  letter, 
full  of  insolent  and  electioneering  denunciation 
of  Mr.  Lincoln  and  the  Government.  They 
stated  that  Mr.  Greeley  made  the  first  advance 
to  them,  which  they  say  ' '  was  accepted  by  us 
as  the  evidence  of.  an  unexpected  but  most  grati 
fying  change  in  the  policy  of  the  President ! " 
They  further  say,  that  they  had  believed  "that 
this  conciliatory  manifestation  on  the  part  of  the 
President  of  the  United  States  would  be  met  by 
them  (Jeff.  Davis  &  Co.)  in  a  temper  of  equal 
magnanimity ! ' '  They  then  denounced  the  Presi 
dent  for  changing  his  mind,  and  not  doing  what 
Mr.  Greeley  had  been  led  to  expect. 

On  receipt  of  this  letter,  in  place  of  setting 
the  President  right,  by  telling  them  that  from  the 
beginning  he  had  held  throughout  but  one  and 
the  same  position,  Mr.  Greeley  left  the  President 
to  rest  under  the  imputation  of  bad  faith. 

Before  taking  his  departure,  Mr.  Greeley  sent 
word  to  the  rebel  "Commissioners"  "that  he 
regrets  the  sad  termination  of  the  initiatory 
steps  taken  for  peace,  in  consequence  of  the 
change  made  by  the  President"  &c.  No  change 
had  in  truth  been  made  by  the  President,  and 
first  and  last  there  was  no  room  to  charge  bad 
faith  or  a  change  of  mind,  excepting  the  false 
position  in  which  Mr.  Greeley  had  placed  the 
President,  by  disobeying  his  instructions,  and 
failing  to  exhibit  his  shrewd  and  guarded  letter. 

When  Mr.  Lincoln  came  to  know  what  had 
been  done,  feeling  indignant  at  the  way  his  con 
fidence  had  been  abused,  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Gree 
ley  for  permission  to  publish  the  correspondence, 
omitting  only  such  points  as  carried  an  exag 
gerated  idea  of  our  military  and  political  condi 
tion  ;  this  request  Mr.  Greeley  refused,  unless 
all  parts  of  the  letters  were  published.  Upon 
this  conduct  of  Mr.  Greeley,  Mr.  Lincoln  com 
mented  in  these  words  :  "I  have  concluded  that 
it  is  better  for  me  to  submit  for  the  time  to  the 
consequences  of  the  false  position  in  which  I 
consider  he  (Greeley)  has  placed  me,  than  to 
subject  the  country  to  the  consequences  of  pub 
lishing  these  discouraging  and  injurious  parts." 

After  Mr.  Lincoln's  death  these  facts  and 
letters  all  came  out.  Mr.  Lincoln  had  delivered 
them  in  confidence  to  Mr.  Raymond,  who,  in 
his  life  of  Lincoln,  exposes  Mr.  Greeley  with  a 
severity  from  which  I  abstain. 

But  several  things  are  undeniable.  First, 
Mr.  Greeley  was  gulled  by  a  shallow  swindle ; 
second,  he  not  only  bit  at  the  bait,  but  pressed 
the  matter  upon  Lincoln,  in  a  manner  snowing 
his  intention  to  carp  at  him  unless  he  yielded  to 
his  views  ;  third,  Lincoln  punctured  the  fraud 
at  a  glance,  and  yet  Greeley  did  not  see  it ; 
fourth,  Greeley  bungled  the  whole  affair  at 
Niagara,  or  else  purposely  violated  the  repeated 
instructions  of  the  President ;  fifth,  he  tamely 
submitted  to  the  most  unblushing  effrontery  and 
imposition  from  the  rebels ;  sixth,  he  expressly 
admitted  and  stated  that  Lincoln  had  been  fickle 
or  untruthful,  when  he  knew  he  had  not ;  and, 
finally,  when  Lincoln  sought  to  vindicate  him- 


30 


The  President  and  His  Slanderers. 


self  by  making  the  truth  public,  Greeley  stifled 
the  truth  by  threatening  if  it  was  told,  to  publish 
matters  having  no  bearing  on  the  case,  but 
which  would  deeply  wound  the  public  interest. 
Who  can  wonder  that  Mr.  Stanton  proposed 
the  arrest  of  Mr.  Greeley  for  holding  unauthor 
ized  and  injurious  intercourse  with  the  enemy  ? 

MR.    GREELEY    AS    FINANCIER. 

War  and  diplomacy  were  not  enough  for  Mr. 
Greeley,  and  he  soon  turned  financier,  and 
assumed  to  dictate  the  financial  policy.  He 
first  opposed  the  Legal  Tender  act,  but  unex 
pectedly  came  out  in  its  favor,  and  continued  to 
advocate  paper  money,  until  the  channels  of 
trade  were  glutted  with  it,  and  gold  went  up  to 
280.  To  guard  against  injustice  to  Mr.  Greeley, 
at  this  point  let  me  read  you  his  own  words,  on 
the  loth  of  February,  1862  : 

"  We  shiver  on  the  brink  of  a  bottomless  abyss  of  Shin- 
plaster  circulation.  Congress  must  provide  funds  for  the 
vigorous  and  immediate  prosecution  of  the  war  for  the 
Union,  and  it  seems  to  have  been  settled  that  it  shall 
take  the  short  and  easy  method  of  making  treasury  notes 
a  legal  tender.  We  utterly  dissent  from  this  conclusion," 
etc. 

After  he  had  changed  his  mind,  and  as  late 
as  February  19,  1864,  he  would  charge  sym 
pathy  with  the  rebellion  upon  a  man  who  op 
posed  greenbacks,  or  advocated  specie  payment. 
Here  is  an  editorial  of  February  1 9th,  1864,  in 
which  Mr.  Greeley  says  : 

"When,  therefore,  we  hear  that  the  Government  ought 
to  have  maintained,  or  ought  now  to  resume,  specie  pay 
ments,  we  know  that  the  speaker  means  that  it  ought  to 
give  up  the  contest  and  let  the  rebels  triumph." 

With  the  vast  issue  of  ''Legal  Tender"  notes, 
business,  of  course,  expanded,  and  merchandise 
and  property  were  bought  at  double  and  treble 
their  old  prices,  to  be  paid  for  in  paper.  In 
this  condition  of  things  Mr.  Greeley  violently 
demanded  the  resumption  of  specie  payments. 
Practical  men  saw,  as  the  event  has  proved,  the 
wisdom  of  a  gradual  approach  to  a  specie  basis  ; 
it  was  as  certain  then  as  it  is  now,  that  to  com 
pel  payment  in  gold  of  debts  contracted  in 
paper  worth  less  than  half  as  much  as  gold, 
would  be  to  strew  our  land  with  wreck  and 
ruin.  Moreover,  it  would  have  been  impossible, 
without  a  miracle,  for  Government,  banks,  or 
people  to  pay  specie  when  Mr.  Greeley  de 
manded  it.  Men  of  sense  everywhere  cried  out 
against  such  an  attempt,  and  demanded  to  know 
how  we  could  suddenly  resume.  Mr.  Greeley 
was  ready  with  answers.  The  chief  answer  was : 
"The  way  to  resume  is  to  resume  !"  On  the 
I2th  of  January,  1866,  he  said  that  more  "six 
per  cent,  untaxed  bonds  "  should  have  been  put 
out,  and  in  that  way,  "  every  obstacle  on  tlie part 
of  the  treasury  to  an  instant  resumption  should 
have  been,  overcome. " 

On  the  5th  of  June,  1867,  he  came  out  with 
this  staggering  programme.  I  commend  it  to 
free-traders,  property  owners,  anti-income  tax 
men,  and  all  men  blest  with  no  better  sense  than 
common  sense  : 

We  believe  in  taxing  so  as  to  pay  the  debt  in  ten 
years.  To  do  this,  the  national  revenue  should  be  about 
$.500,000,000  per  annum,  or  the  same  as  in  1866.  Had 
it  been  kept  there,  we  might  have  celebrated  our  country's 
centenary  on  the  4th  of  July,  1876,  completely  out  of 
debt.  And  we  hold  that  this  might  have  been  done,  by 


taxing  with  steady  purpose  to  diminish  the  number 
idlers,  or  uselessly  employed  persons,  and  increase  I 
proportion  of  productive  workers,  without  prejudice 
the  national  growth  or  prosperity.  Here,  for  examp 
are  a  good  many  thousands  of  our  people  who  have 
comes  of  $10,000  up  to  $1,000,000  per  annum.  Supp* 
these -were  to  pay  ten  per  cent,  income  tax,  -what  of; 
They  will  live  less  sumptuously,  or  board  less  bounteou: 
for  a  few  years— that  is  all.  They  will  still  enjoy  eve 
comfort,  and  will  be  growing  richer  if  they  choose. 

Of  late,  Mr.  Greeley  has  outrun  everybody 
denouncing  the  income  tax  ;  but  hear  what  '. 
used  to  say.  Here  are  his  views,  June  I 
1863:  . 

One  of  the  fairest  and  most  productive  sources 
British  revenue  is  the  income  tax  assessed  on  all  incoir 
in  the  United  Kingdom  above  $750  per  annum.  0 
corresponding  tax  exempts  incomes  from  taxation  to  t 
amount  of  $600,  but  exacts  three  per  cent,  on  all  abo 
that  amount,  and  five  per  cent,  on  all  excess  Q\ 
$10,000  per  annum.  In  other  words  :  "here  is  a  t 
which  does  not  at  all  affect  the  laboring  class,  I 
which  reaches  nearly  every  one  above  them." 

Compare  this  with  what  he  said  Dec.  I 
1869: 

We  do  not  believe  there  is  a  tax  levied  by  the  Govei 
ment  so  onerous  upon  so  large  a  class  of  people  as  t 
income  tax.  It  is  not  equal — its  exactions  are  unjus 
and  it  discriminates  against  persons  of  limited  means. 

Again,  June  26,  1869,  he  thus  delivered  hir 
self: 

The  income  tax  is  one  of  the  worst  ever  levied,  inqu 
itorial,   unequal,    and   offering   a   premium  for  perjur 
We  trust  its  days  are  nearly  numbered — that  it  will 
the  very  next  of  our  heavy  war  burdens  removed. 

These  are  a  few  of  the  gems  of  Mr.  Greeley 
financial  theories,  and  those  who  did  not  acce] 
them  were  visited  with  epithets  and  reproach, 
^  I  ask  business  men  to  look  back  now,  ar 
think  what  would  have  happened  had  Horai 
Greeley  been  President  ( ien. 

With  this  one  passage'  Before  you,  would  yc 
as  business   men,  trust  ^jr.   Greeley  to  run 
cider  mill  and  financier  f4t? 

In  case  of  war,  how  all  ^-ould  lean  on  him  ; 
Commander-in- Chief  of  the  Army  and  Nav; 
In  case  of  a  financial  crisis  how  steady  he  woui 
be. 

In  case  of  riot  in  New  York,  or  outbreak  i 
the  South,  how  his  name  would  strike  tern 
into  babes  and  men. 

In  case  of  storm,  next  to  going  to  sea  in 
wash-tub,  what  would  be  so  safe  as  the  admii 
istration  of  such  a  man  ? 

He  who  changes  his  mind  often,  upon  th 
greatest  matters,  should  be  tolerant  of  differena 
of  opinion. 

HOW    MR.     GREELEY    TREATS     THOSE     WHO 
DIFFER   FROM    HIM. 

See  how  Mr.  Greeley  deals  with  those  wh 
differ  with  him.  Here  are  specimens  of  h: 
editorials  interesting  to  Democrats  : 

All  do  know  that  there  are  several  hundred  thousan 
mulattoes  in  this  country  ;  and  we  presume  that  no  or 
has  any  serious  doubt  that  the  fathers  of  at  least  nim 
tenths  of  them  are  white  Democrats,  and  we  are  to! 
that  those  Democrats,  if  they  will  have  yellow  childrei 
might  better  than  otherwise  treat  the  mothers  respec 
ively  as  wives  after  the  laudable  pattern  of  that  eminei 
Democrat,  Vice-President  Richard  M.  Johnson. — De< 
10,  1867. 

Every  one  who  chooses  to  live  by  pugilism,  or  gaml 
ling,  or  harlotry,  with  nearly  every  keeper  of  a  tipplinj 
house,  is  politically  a  Democrat, — Jan.  7,  1868. 


Senator  Conldintfs   Great  Speech  at  New    York. 


31 


Point  where'er  you  please  to  an  election  district  which 
you  will  pronunce  morally  rotten,  given  up  in  great 
part  to  debmchcry  and  vice,  whose  voters  subsist 
mainly  by  keping  policy  offices,  gambling  houses,  grog 
shops  and  d.rker  dens  of  infamy,  and  that  district  will 
be  found  at  learly  or  quite  nearly  every  election  giving 
a  majority  fr  that  which  styles  itself  the  "  Democratic 
party.  Tale  all  the  haunt's  of  debauchery  in  the  land, 
and  you  \vll  find  nine-tenths  of  their  master-spirits 
active  parti.ans  of  that  same  Democracy.  What  is  the 
instinct,  th:  sympathetic  cord,  which  attaches  them  so 
uniformly  o  this  party  ?  Will  you  consider? 

We  thereupon  ask  our  contemporary  to  state  frankly 
whether  t!.e  pugilists,  blacklegs,  thieves,  burglars,  keep 
ers  of  ders  of  prostitution,  etc.,  etc.,  were  not  almost 
unanimously  Democrats. 

A  pure.y  selfish  interest  attaches  the  lewd,  ruffianly, 

criminal  and  dangerous  classes  to  the  Democratic  party. 

./This   would  amount  to  six  in  a  bed,  exclusive  of  any 

other  vennin,  for  every  Democratic  couch  in  the  State  of 

New  York,  including  those  at  Sing  Sing  ai»d  Auburn. 

When  the  rebellious  traitors  are  overwhelmed  in  the 
field  and  scattered  like  leaves  before  an  angry  wind,  it 
must  not  be  to  return  to  peaceful  and  contented  homes, 
they  must  find  poverty  at  their  firesides  and  privation  in 
the  anxious  eyes  of  mothers  and  the  rags  of  children  ! 

MR-    GREELEY    AS   A   POLITICIAN. 

Eccentricity  and  fickleness  are  Mr.  Greeley's 
traits.  As  a  politician,  he  has  bolted  and  ad 
vised  bolting  ;  he  has  opposed  the  nomination 
or  election  of  every  President  who  has  been 
chosen  for  thirty  years  ;  he  has  quarreled  with 
every  Administration  ;  he  has  assailed  the  char 
acter  of  those  he  differed  with  wantonly  and 
savagely  ;  he  has  imputed  corruption  to  others 
merely  for  not  voting  or  thinking  as  he  did  ;  he 
sought  by  intrigue  the  defeat  of  Mr.  Lincoln 
after  he  was  nominated  the  second  time,  and  as 
late  as  September  2,  1864,  wrote  secret  letters, 
which  have  since  come  to  light,  to  concoct  mea 
sures  to  prevent  Lincoln's  election  ;  he  strove 
to  poison  President  Grant  against  capable  and 
honest  Republicans,  and  advised  him  to  exclude 
from  his  councils  men  trained  in  public  affairs  ; 
he  has  recommended  unfit  men  for  office,  and 
insisted  on  their  appointment ;  after  endorsing 
and  applauding  everything  involving  principle, 
or  relating  to  the  public  interest  done  by  the 
Administration,  he  has  struck  at  the  President 
on  account  of  "patronage,"  and  bolted  the 
party,  after  manoeuvring  more  than  a  year  to 
get  its  nomination. 

On  the  4th  of  May,  1871,  he  wrote  William 
Laraiore,  who  had  inquired-  whether  he  would 
be  a  candidate  for  President  before  the  Republi 
can  Covention  this  year  :  "  I  fully  propose  also 
never  to  decline  any  duty  or  responsibility  which 
my  political  friends  see  fit  to  devolve  upon 
me,"  and  having  thus  put  himself  in  the  field, 
he  started  for  the  South  to  make  speeches,  in 
one  of  which  he  asserted  over  again  the  right  of 
secession,  and  in  another  hoped  for  the  time 
when  his  countrymen  would  feel  pride  in  Lee 
and  Stonewall  Jackson. 

He  apologized  for  Tammany  robbers,  enjoy 
ing  from  them  at  the  same  time  an  immense  ad 
vertising  patronage,  and  blocking  the  wheels  of 
reform  after  the  Tammany  frauds  were  known 
to  the  whole  nation  ;  he  colluded  with  men 
known  to  be  in  the  interest  of  Tammany  Hall, 
and  whom  he  had  previously  so  branded  himself, 


to  prevent  the  Republican  party  being  purged 
of  Tammany  influence  ;  for  two  years  before  his 
open  desertion,  he  sought  to  divide  and  destroy 
the  Republican  party  of  New  York,  and  traduc 
ed  many  upright  men  because  of  their  resistance 
to  the  domination  of  corruptionists  ;  and,  finally, 
in  signing  the  call  for  the  Cincinnati  Convention, 
which  adopted  the  Free  Trade  Missouri  Plat 
form,  he  turned  his  back  on  the  only  political 
principle  or  idea  prominent  for  the  last  ten  years, 
of  which  he  had  not  before  been  on  both  sides. 

CONCLUSION. 

Yat  in  the  blind  staggers  of  faction  the  Amer 
ican  people  are  challenged  to  scan  and  decide 
upon  this  record. 

Such  a  coalition,  and  such  a  nomination, 
mean  chaos  and  disorder.  You  see  this  already 
in  North  Carolina,  where  the  American  flag  is 
showered  with  stale  eggs,  and  where  the  mob 
refuses  to  allow  honored  citizens  born  there  to 
"speak  ;  and  you  will  see  it  at  every  step  until  the 
curtain  falls  in  November. 

"Liberal  Republican"  movements  have  been 
tried  in  other  States,  and,  until  the  results  were 
felt,  they  succeeded.  They  tried  in  Virginia 
nominating  a  Republican  for  Governor,  on  a 
bargain  with  the  Democrats;  many  Republicans 
were  entrapped  and  Virginia  is  cursed  with  a 
rule  which  the  best  Democrats  are  ashamed  of. 

They  tried  in  West  Virginia  a  fusion  between 
"outs"  and  Democrats,  and  now  West  Virginia 
holds  debate  in  her  Constitutional  Convention  on 
the  question  of  nullifying  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  and  depriving  the  blacks  of  the 
right  to  vote.  They  tried  in  Tennessee  a  move 
ment  of  bolters  and  Democrats,  and  the  result  is 
the  destruction  of  common  schools,  in  which 
190,000  children  were  cultured. 

They  tried  the  experiment  in  Missouri,  and 
the  fruit  it  lxn-e  is  a  Democratic  State  Govern 
ment  and  Frank  Blair  in  the  Senate. 

In  all  these  cases,  one  side  or  the  other  was 
cheated,  and  the  public  interest  was  harmed, 
and  now  it  is  proposed  to  attempt  the  same 
thing  on  a  national  scale. 

No  wonder  that  leading  Democratic  journals 
and  a  large  body  of  Democrats  refuse  to  be 
parties  to  such  chicanery,  and  no  wonder  that 
it  draws  to  itself,  as  no  other  movement  ever 
did,  the  very  worst  elements,  North  and  South. 

The  issue  stands  before  you.  On  the  one 
side  is  safe,  tried  and  stable  Government ;  peace 
with  all  nations,  and  prosperity  at  home,  with 
business  thriving,  and  debt  and  taxes  melting 
away. 

On  the  other  side  is  a  hybrid  conglomeration 
made  up  of  the  crotchets,  distempers,  and  per 
sonal  aims  of  restless  and  disappointed  men. 
What  ills  might  come  of  committing  to  them 
the  affairs  of  the  nation  no  judgment  can  fathom, 
no  prophecy  can  foretell. 

The  result  is  very  safe,  because  it  rests  with 
the  same  generation  which  was  given  by  Provi 
dence  to  see  through  the  darkness  of  the  rebel 
lion,  and  that  generation  cannot  be  blinded  now. 


\ 


\ 


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AN  INITIAL  FINE  OP  25  CENTS 

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THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
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DAY  AND  TO  $I.OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 


MAY  6     Ui 

nCT24JQfift  7  a 

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^IVED 

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REC'D  LtJe 

5ml  1978 

APf>      9  t«.«ffl 

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7«RW'62t?« 

BED.CIB.    APR  2  7  1982 

REG  D  LD 

APR  23  1904 

—  CPfl  9  A  1Qfi? 

f\  —  •*»-*/  —  JO%J*f  

rLD  o^t  K7v& 

LD  21-100m-7,'39(402s) 

Gaylamount 
Pamphlet 

Binder 
Gaylord  Bros.,  Inc. 

Stockton,  Calif. 
T.M.  Reg.  U.S.  Pat.  Off. 


V26282 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


